packer-windoze

This repo contains code that can generate Packer templates designed to build and package Windows templates for use with Vagrant boxes. The overall goal is to cover all supported Windows OS' included Windows Server, Server Core, Server Nano and the Desktop OS' but the main focus is on the Windows Server images.

Each image is designed to be;

Fully updated at the time of creation
As small as can be possible for a Windows image
Contain minimal tools useful for Windows development such as the sysinternals suite
Enable WinRM (HTTP and HTTPS) and RDP on creation in Vagrant allowing other tools to interact with a new image without manual interaction
Each image contain the maximum amount of time available on a Windows evaluation image (usually 180 days) without prompting for a key

The blog post Using Packer to Create Windows Images contain a more detailed guide on this process and how it all works. Feel free to read through it if you want to understand each component and how they fit together more.

Requirements

To use the scripts in this repo you will need the following;

pywinrm
Packer >= 1.0.0
VirtualBox >= 5.1.12
Ansible >= 2.5.1

When setting man_packer_setup_host_type: 2008-x64, Ansible will extract the evaluation ISO from a self extracting archive. This requires the unrar package to be installed. If you don't want to install this package, manually extract the ISO on another box and specify the path under opt_packer_setup_iso_path.

How to Run

To create an image, the process is split up into 2 phases

Create the files required for Packer to build and provision an image
Run Packer based on the files created above

Create Packer Files

For Packer to provision a Windows host it first needs an Autounattend.xml file and bootstrapping script to configure the base host requirements needed by Ansible. Instead of having them already stored in the repo, they are dynamically created by Ansible.

To create the files for a particular host type run;

ansible-playbook packer-setup.yml -e man_packer_setup_host_type=<host type>

# see below what can be used for <host type> but to create the Packer files for a Server 2012 R2 image run
ansible-playbook packer-setup.yml -e man_packer_setup_host_type=2012r2

After running the playbook, a folder named based on the value set for man_packer_setup_host_type will be created and it will contain the following files;

Autounattend.xml: The answer file used by Windows during the initial install
bootstrap.ps1: A PowerShell script that is run after the initial install to configure the host required by Ansible
hosts.ini: An Ansible inventory file containing the info required by Ansible during the provisioning phase
packer.json: The Packer definition file the contains all the info that Packer needs to build the image

Mandatory Variables

The following parameters must be set using the -e arguments;

man_packer_setup_host_type: The host type string that tells packer what to build, see options below

You can set the host type to the following values

2008-x86: Windows Server 2008 Standard 32-bit
2008-x64: Windows Server 2008 Standard 64-bit
2008r2: Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
2012: Windows Server 2012 Standard
2012r2: Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard
2016: Windows Server 2016 Standard
1709: Windows Server Build 1709 Standard (Requires ISO to be manually downloaded)

Optional Variables

The following are optional parameters set using the -e argument and can change the way Packer builds the images in the next step;

opt_packer_setup_iso_path: The local path to the install Windows ISO, this means packer will use this instead of downloading the pre-set evaluation ISO from the internet.
opt_packer_setup_iso_wim_label: The WIM image name to use when installing Windows from an ISO, the process defaults to the Standard edition if not set.
opt_packer_setup_username: (Default: vagrant) The name of the user to create in the provisioning process, this is the only user that will available in the image created as the builtin Administrator account is disabled.
opt_packer_setup_password: (Default: vagrant) The password for opt_packer_setup_username, this password is also set for the builtin Administrator account even though it is disabled in the image.
opt_packer_setup_product_key: The product key to use when installing Windows, do not set this unless you know what you are doing.

To add a post-processor to upload to Vagrant Cloud, add in the following 3 variables;

opt_packer_setup_access_token: The acces token for the Vagrant Cloud API, this is set to the access_token key in the packer build file.
opt_packer_setup_box_tag: The shorthand tag for the map that maps to Vagrant Cloud, this is set to the box_tag key in the packer build file.
opt_packer_setup_version: The version number for the box which is validated based on semantic versioning, this is set to the version key in the packer build file.

Create Images with Packer

Once the packer files have been created under it's own folder, Packer can now be used to create the image. Run the following to start the process

packer build -force <host_type>/packer.json

# replace <host_type> with the type to build, e.g. for Server 2012 R2
packer build -force 2012r2/packer.json

This process takes a looong time to finish as Packer will download the ISO, install Windows and finally configure Windows. The best thing to do is to run this overnight or as a background process.

Once complete the virtualbox.box file will be created in the same folder the packer.json file is located in. This file can be added to Vagrant using vagrant box add virtualbox.box or can be shared with others using your own methods.

What It Does

Here is a brief step by step overview of what actually happens with the images

Packer start a VM under VirtualBox and attactes the Autounattend.xml and bootstrap.ps1 script to the floppy disk (A: drive)
Windows starts the install process and configures it according to the Autounattend.xml file
After the install is complete Windows will auto login to the vagrant user and run the bootstrap.ps1 script
The bootstrap script will ensure that PowerShell v3 or greater is installed, WinRM is setup and other things
Packer detects that WinRM is up and running and starts the provision process which is the Ansible playbook
Ansible will then install all available updates and reboot accordingly (this step can take hours so be prepared to wait)
Some personalisation tweaks occur such as showing hidden files and folders, file extensions and installing the sysinternals tools
Will try to cleanup as much of the WinSXS folder as possible (older hosts are limited in how much it can do)
Will remove all non enabled Features if Features on Demand is supported (Server 2012 and newer)
Remove pagefile, temp files, log files that are not needed. Defrags the disk and 0's out empty space for the compression to work properly
Setup the sysprep template files
Remove the WinRM listeners and run the sysprep process to shutdown the host

From this point Packer will create an image of the OS which can be used by Vagrant. When Vagrant first starts up the image, it will automatically log on and, rearm the activation key and recreate the WinRM listeneres.

Backlog/Future Work

Windows Server Core images
Windows Server Nano images
Windows 10 32 and 64 bit
Look at supporting parallel builds
Look at slipstreaming Windows updates into the evaluation ISO's instead of running the updates from scratch each time
Look at supporting local WSUS servers during the Update phase to save time and bandwidth
Automatically use generated template file for the description when uploading box

zoredache/packer-windoze