Building a CentOS Virtual Appliance (OVA) using Packer

This repo builds a CentOS 8 virtual appliance for vSphere bundled as an OVA. You can deploy the appliance and have it configured with no further action or need to login.

Key capabilities

• Configure hostname
• Configure IP settings
• Set root password
• Inject SSH keys for the root user
• SSH enabled
• Perl installed for VMware network customisation e.g. during SRM recovery

This project re-purposes almost all of the work from https://github.com/lamw/photonos-appliance

Requirements

• MacOS or Linux Desktop
• vCenter Server or Standalone ESXi host 6.x or greater
• VMware OVFTool
• Packer

packer builds the OVA on a remote ESXi host via the vmware-iso builder. This builder requires the SSH service running on the ESXi host, the advanced setting GuestIPHack enabled and firewall ports open for VNC. The easiest way to configure all 3 is to VIB from https://github.com/umich-vci/packer-vib

esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported
esxcli software vib install -v https://github.com/umich-vci/packer-vib/releases/download/v1.0.0-1/packer.vib

Build Instructions

Step 1 - Clone the git repository

git clone https://github.com/mmcgilly/centos-appliance.git

Step 2 - Edit the centos-builder.json file to configure the vSphere endpoint for building the CentOS appliance

{
  "builder_host": "192.168.30.10",
  "builder_host_username": "root",
  "builder_host_password": "VMware1!",
  "builder_host_datastore": "vsanDatastore",
  "builder_host_portgroup": "VM Network"
}

Also edit the centos.json file to add your vSphere endpoint so the packer VM can be unregistered after the build.

"variables": {
    "centos_ovf_template": "centos.xml.template",
    "ovftool_deploy_vcenter": "vcsa.lab.local",
    "ovftool_deploy_vcenter_username": "administrator@vsphere.local",
    "ovftool_deploy_vcenter_password": "VMware1!"
  }

Note: If you need to change the initial root password on the CentOS appliance, take a look at centos-version.json and http/ks.cfg.

Step 3 - Start the build by running the build script which simply calls Packer and the respective build files

./build.sh

If you wish to automatically deploy the CentOS appliance after successfully building the OVA. You can edit the centos-dev.xml.template file and change the ovftool_deploy_* variables and run ./build.sh dev instead.