This repository provides a collection of opinionated examples that demonstrate how you can use both HashiCorp Packer and the Packer Plugin for VMware vSphere (vsphere-iso builder) to automate the creation of virtual machine images for VMware vSphere environments.
Whether you're a developer, systems administrator, or site reliability engineer, this project is designed to both help and inspire you in streamlining your infrastructure provisioning process and maintain consistency in your virtualization workflow.
All examples are provided in the HashiCorp Configuration Language ("HCL").
This project supports the following guest operating systems:
| Operating System | Version |
|---|---|
| VMware Photon OS | 5 |
| VMware Photon OS | 4 |
| Debian | 12 |
| Debian | 11 |
| Ubuntu Server | 23.10 |
| Ubuntu Server | 22.04 LTS |
| Ubuntu Server | 20.04 LTS |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux | 9 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux | 8 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux | 7 |
| AlmaLinux OS | 9 |
| AlmaLinux OS | 8 |
| Rocky Linux | 9 |
| Rocky Linux | 8 |
| Oracle Linux | 9 |
| Oracle Linux | 8 |
| CentOS Stream | 9 |
| CentOS Stream | 8 |
| CentOS Linux | 7 |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server | 15 |
| Operating System | Version | Editions | Experience |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Windows Server | 2025 | Standard and Datacenter | Core and Desktop |
| Microsoft Windows Server | 2022 | Standard and Datacenter | Core and Desktop |
| Microsoft Windows Server | 2019 | Standard and Datacenter | Core and Desktop |
| Microsoft Windows | 11 | Professional and Enterprise | - |
| Microsoft Windows | 10 | Professional and Enterprise | - |
Please refer to the documentation for more detailed information about this project.
The project team welcomes contributions from the community. Please read our Developer Certificate of Origin. All contributions to this repository must be signed as described on that page. Your signature certifies that you wrote the patch or have the right to pass it on as an open-source patch.
For more detailed information, refer to the contribution guidelines to get started.
This project is not supported by VMware Support Services.
We welcome you to use the GitHub issues tracker to report bugs or suggest features and enhancements.
When filing an issue, please check existing open, or recently closed, issues to make sure someone else hasn't already reported the issue.
Please try to include as much information as you can. Details like these are incredibly useful:
- A reproducible test case or series of steps.
- Any modifications you've made relevant to the bug.
- Anything unusual about your environment or deployment.
You can also start a discussion on the discussions area to ask questions or share ideas.
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Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
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