Packer builds VMware cluster nodes in CentOS 7 for use in DC/OS & Swarm Clusters.
- Packer 1.0.4+ (brew install/upgrade packer)
- VMware (Fusion Pro 8+/ Workstation Pro 12+)
- VMware's ovftool in $PATH
- Ansible 2.3+ (brew install/upgrade ansible)
Note: To save time you may want to seed the iso folder with the respective iso files used in the creation of CentOS or RHEL based VMs. Simply download them and place them in the iso folder. Packer will download them on demand if they don't exist already in the folder.
Make sure to create keys/authorized_keys before you run build. This is installed in the root account of the vm. Provisioning scripts that use this image are based on passwordless ssh.
Run the set-key script in the keys folder to set authorized_keys to the rsa key found in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
To build the vmx and ova node image use the wrapper script and specify the type:
bash build [centos7]
The builder creates a VMX in the respective output__vmx folder .
This is post-processed using ovftool into a single file OVA template located in the output_ova folder.
Default approach is to use DHCP to reserve addresses by MAC, and then statically assign IPs as needed. The OVA template has the primary NIC set for DHCP on boot.
When the OVA is imported and booted for the first time it will be assigned a mac address by VMware for the life of the VM instance - DHCP will assign a temporary address when the machine is first launched. After the first phase of cluster-builder provisioning, the server is assigned its static (DHCP) address and hostname, and the temporary DHCP address is put back into the pool (only to be used during deployment activity).
For VMware Fusion, DHCP is the way to go and is how static IPs are assigned on local workstations. For ESXi, we use ansible to configure a static IP as part of the deployment process.
These OVA images are the first stage of a deployment workflow:
1] Generate OVA cluster templates with Packer (this stage) 2] Use Ansible to deploy your VM instances and configure your cluster 3] Continue to use Ansible to manage and maintain your cluster.
The combination of Git + Packer + Ansible should ensure that all configuration is documented and repeatable, with no manual or ad-hoc configuration.