Packer with VMWare vCenter

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Jeroen de Vroede

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Jul 11, 2016, 6:56:44 AM7/11/16
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Hi, I have a question regarding using packer on VMWare vCenter. I've been looking around, but haven't found a conclusive answer yet, so I'm giving this channel a go. 
In the documentation I've read that you need to set the GuestIPHack hack, but I'm wondering what the security implications of this are and, would one set this on each VM host? 
And add the vCenter as the host in packer? 

Kind regards,
Jeroen

Alvaro Miranda Aguilera

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Jul 13, 2016, 1:19:12 PM7/13/16
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Hello

From memory, my understanding is that packer will ssh into the vmware host and run the commands there.

The security implications can be that the user/password will have to be somewhere and that may cause problems. so the best will be not include the credentials in the same json file, use either variables, or a separeate ver json file.

from what I remember, vmware wont have this ssh enabled by default, so depending on the company it may take some time get this approved.

now, lets say you have vmware infra for prod only, then you could have a vmware build box, and use vmware workstation/fusion externally, and just share the ova to the vmware admin and follow their process.

vmware does have all the bits to be fully automated, is just not everyone use it in this way.

Alvaro.

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Jeroen de Vroede

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Jul 19, 2016, 6:42:23 AM7/19/16
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Hi Alvaro,

Thank you for your response. 

So the setting on the VMware box doesn't have any implecations?
So your advice would be to use a stand-alone vmware ESXi server to create the builds on?

Regards,
Jeroen

Dan Tran

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Jul 19, 2016, 1:37:41 PM7/19/16
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yes, no VCenter support. You need to use stand-alone ESXi

-D

Jeroen de Vroede

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Jul 20, 2016, 2:56:13 AM7/20/16
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Ok, clear. Thank you.
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