Packer templates for Windows

Overview

This repository contains templates for Windows that can create Vagrant boxes using Packer.

Core Boxes

64-bit boxes:

win2012r2-datacenter-nocm, VMware 4.3GB/VirtualBox 4.2GB
win2012-datacenter-nocm, VMware 3.7GB/VirtualBox 3.5GB
win2008r2-datacenter-nocm, VMware 3.0GB/VirtualBox 2.8GB
win81x64-enterprise-nocm, VMware 4.0GB/VirtualBox 3.6GB
win8x64-enterprise-nocm, VMware 3.6GB/VirtualBox 3.3GB
win7x64-enterprise-nocm, VMware 3.5GB/VirtualBox 3.2GB

Building the Vagrant boxes

To build all the boxes, you will need both VirtualBox and VMware Fusion or Workstation installed.

A GNU Make Makefile drives the process via the following targets:

make        # Build all the box types (VirtualBox & VMware)
make test   # Run tests against all the boxes
make list   # Print out individual targets
make clean  # Clean up build detritus

To build one particular box, e.g. eval-win7x86-enterprise, for just one provider, e.g. VirtualBox, first run make list subcommand:

make list

This command prints the list of available boxes. Then you can build one particular box for choosen provider:

make virtualbox/eval-win7x86-enterprise

Tests

The tests are written in Serverspec and require the vagrant-serverspec plugin to be installed with:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-serverspec

The Makefile has individual targets for each box type with the prefix test-* should you wish to run tests individually for each box.

Similarly there are targets with the prefix ssh-* for registering a newly-built box with vagrant and for logging in using just one command to do exploratory testing. For example, to do exploratory testing on the VirtualBox training environmnet, run the following command:

make ssh-box/virtualbox/win2008r2-standard-nocm.box

Upon logout make ssh-* will automatically de-register the box as well.

Makefile.local override

You can create a Makefile.local file alongside the Makefile to override some of the default settings. It is most commonly used to override the default configuration management tool, for example with Chef:

# Makefile.local
CM := chef

Changing the value of the CM variable changes the target suffixes for the output of make list accordingly.

Possible values for the CM variable are:

nocm - No configuration management tool
chef - Install Chef
puppet - Install Puppet
salt - Install Salt

You can also specify a variable CM_VERSION, if supported by the configuration management tool, to override the default of latest. The value of CM_VERSION should have the form x.y or x.y.z, such as CM_VERSION := 11.12.4

Another use for Makefile.local is to override the default locations for the Windows install ISO files.

For Windows, the ISO path variables are:

EVAL_WIN10_X64
EVAL_WIN10_X86
EVAL_WIN2008R2_X64
EVAL_WIN2012R2_X64
EVAL_WIN7_X64
EVAL_WIN7_X86
EVAL_WIN81_X64
EVAL_WIN81_X86
EVAL_WIN8_X64
WIN2008R2_X64
WIN2012_X64
WIN2012R2_X64
WIN7_X64_ENTERPRISE
WIN7_X64_PRO
WIN7_X86_ENTERPRISE
WIN7_X86_PRO
WIN81_X64_ENTERPRISE
WIN81_X64_PRO
WIN81_X86_ENTERPRISE
WIN81_X86_PRO
WIN8_X64_ENTERPRISE
WIN8_X64_PRO
WIN8_X86_ENTERPRISE
WIN8_X86_PRO

You can also override these setting, such as with

WIN81_X64_PRO := file:///Volumes/MSDN/en_windows_8.1_professional_vl_with_update_x64_dvd_4065194.iso

Acknowledgments

Parallels provides a Business Edition license of their software to run on the basebox build farm.

SmartyStreets is providing basebox hosting for the boxcutter project.