vSphere Builder

The vSphere Packer builder is able to create vSphere virtual machines for use with any VMware product.

This Packer plugin includes three builders to create vSphere machines, depending on the strategy you want to use to build the image:

• vsphere-iso - This builder starts from an ISO file and utilizes the vSphere API to build on a remote esx instance. This allows you to build VMs even if you do not have SSH access to your vSphere cluster.

• vsphere-clone - This builder clones a VM from an existing template, then modifies it and saves it as a new template. It uses the vSphere API to build on a remote esx instance. This allows you to build VMs even if you do not have SSH access to your vSphere cluster.

• vsphere-supervisor - This builder deploys a VM to a vSphere Supervisor cluster, utilizing VM Service. This allows you to build VMs without spec yaml files, configure them after using the Packer provisioners, and publish them as new VM images to a specified content library in vSphere.

How to use this plugin

From Packer v1.7.0, copy and paste this code into your Packer configuration to install this plugin. Then, run packer init.

packer {
  required_plugins {
    vsphere = {
      version = ">= 1.1.1"
      source = "github.com/hashicorp/vsphere"
    }
  }
}