Linux VM builder

Automatically create, launch and provision new linux VM's with packer in a vSphere cluster and ansible included

How it works

You launch packer from the command line
Packer fetches the debian ISO image from the internet and uploads it to vSphere server
Packer creates and launches a new virtual machine in vSphere (see debian-10.2.json)
Packer runs an unattended installation of a minimal system (see http/preseed.cfg)
After installation packer does the remaining provisioning using ansible (see provision-ansible/)

Prepare your environment

Install Packer (https://packer.io/)
Install Packer Builder for VMware vSphere (https://github.com/jetbrains-infra/packer-builder-vsphere)
Export AD_USERNAME and AD_PASSWORD environment variables of user with sufficient permissions to build VM
Make sure the vsphere VM folder is created before trying to add a VM to it

Building a new VM

The example command below will create a VM with a 20GB disk, 2 CPU's and 2GB of RAM with hostname 'test-vm' inside vsphere vm folder 'test-wouter'.

Note that you can override all variables defined at the bottom of debian-10.2.json.

packer build \
    -var 'cpus=2' -var 'memory=2048' -var 'disk_size_mb=20480' \
    -var 'hostname=test-vm' -var 'vsphere_vm_name=test-vm' \
    -on-error=ask debian-10.2.json

Tip: Launch a web console in vsphere to inspect packer installing debian.

Accessing the VM after creating it

Access the VM over SSH using a user called 'debian' with password 'insecure', it has password less sudo access.

References

Debian 10 (Buster) example preseed: https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/example-preseed.txt

Thanks also to ->

Coworker Wouter Westenbrink, for the great summerize of search results out of the internet and his own adopt ideas for this reporitory in the devops team!
Hope we have a lot projects together in the future!

odonzyk / linux-packer-vm-builder