Packer Templates for Windows Server 2019

This repo contains Packer templates for building dockerized Windows Server 2019 virtual machines. It demonstrates a workflow that uses Ansible to provision a minimal Windows Server with Docker Engine. The virtual machine's Docker instance can be administered from the host with docker context use windows-server-docker. It was designed with the ability to build and test Windows Docker images from Unix-like systems in mind, but it can also be used with Hyper-V and provides a good baseline for automation on a properly configured Windows Server VM.

• Packer Templates for Windows Server 2019
  • Installation Requirements
    • Windows Server 2019 ISO
    • Parallels Pro or Business Edition
    • VMWare Desktop
    • Other Vagrant Providers
  • Usage
    • Building the Vagrant VM
    • Start the VM
    • Testing your Dockerfiles
  • Concepts Demonstrated
  • Other Resourcees

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Installation Requirements

• Ansible
• Docker
• Packer
• Vagrant >= 1.8

Using your favorite package manager, run:

# MacOS
brew install ansible docker packer vagrant

# Debian
apt-get install ansible docker packer vagrant

Windows Server 2019 ISO

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2019

Parallels Pro or Business Edition

Packer also requires the Parallels virtualization SDK. You can install it with Homebrew:

brew cask install parallels-virtualization-sdk

vagrant plugin install vagrant-parallels

VMWare Desktop

vagrant plugin install vagrant-vmware-desktop
vagrant plugin license vagrant-vmware-desktop <license.lic>

Other Vagrant Providers

todo

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Usage

Building the Vagrant VM

git clone https://github.com/cagyirey/packer-windows-server.git && cd packer-windows-server
./build.sh ~/path/to/windows.iso --only=<provider>
vagrant box add --name server2004 ./windows_server_<provider>.box

build.sh <path to iso> <extra args> simplifies the packer build syntax slightly by setting the path to our Windows Server image and passing any extra arguments directly to Packer (such as your desired VM provider). This script should be used on MacOS, as it sets necessary environment variables for Ansible. You can also use manual packer build syntax can be used instead:

packer build --var "iso_url=~/path/to/windows.iso" --only=<provider> windows_server_2004.json

Valid values for provider are, as of now: parallels-iso and parallels-pvm. Support for VMWare, VirtualBox, Hyper-V and others is in progress. Now create a folder to contain your Vagrant VMs.

Start the VM

# Projects are shared with the build container via the /projects folder
# Vagrant will require it in order to boot.
mkdir -p vagrant_vms/projects && cd vagrant_vms
vagrant init server2004
vagrant up

That's it! Your VM will start and automatically create a new docker-machine context and share it with your host (in ~/docker/). To use your new context, run docker context use windows-server-vagrant.

Testing your Dockerfiles

You're now ready to manage the Docker instance on your VM. Try docker run buildtools dotnet msbuild -Ver to see the installed version of MSBuild. The buildtools image provided in the default configuration is a the .NET 5.0 SDK and a patched version of MSBuild (use dotnet msbuild) that supports the Microsoft C++ Build Tools, making it a tiny but powerful and completely unique Nano Server-based build container.

Concepts Demonstrated

• Deploying Visual Studio, .NET SDK and VC++ Build Tools on Windows Nano Server containers
• Generating docker-machine contexts and certs with PowerShell
• Configuring WinRM to use secure transport settings during unattended install
• Leveraging Vagrant provisioning to build and run containers at startup
• Much more

Other Resourcees

• https://jfreeman.dev/blog/2019/07/09/what-i-learned-making-a-docker-container-for-building-c++-on-windows/