ws2022

What is this project about?

ws2022 is a set of configuration files used to build automated Windows Server 2022 virtual machine images using Packer. This Packer configuration file allows you to build images for VMware Workstation and Oracle VM VirtualBox.

Prerequisites

• Packer to run the build process
• VMware vCenter and VMware ESXI to build on
• xorriso, mkisofs, hdiutil (macOS) or oscdimg (part of Windows ADK) on the build host to build a CD ISO
• tar for building an OVA from the export OVF files

Build process

Unattended Windows Installation (autounattend.xml and sysprep-autounattend.xml)

• Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Eval Edition (Desktop Experience)
• Changing Eval to Full Datacenter version with KMS key
• Install & configure OpenSSH Client & Server for remote connection
• Installation of VMware tools from ISO provided from the build ESX server

Packer Provisioner Steps

• Updating OS via Windows Update
• Doing some OS adjustments
  • Set Windows telemetry settings to minimum
  • Show file extentions by default
  • Install Chocolatey - a Windows package manager
    • Install Microsoft Edge (Chromium)
    • Install Win32-OpenSSH-Server
    • Install PowerShell Core
    • Install 7-Zip
    • Install Notepad++
  • Enable Powershell-Core (pwsh) to be the default SSHD shell
• Cleanup tasks
• Remove CDROM drives from VM template (otherwise there would be 2)

Additional Gitlab-CI build steps

• Export VM and package as an OVA file
• Copy OVA file to an SMB share for further use

Result

Parameter	Value
Template type	.ova
VM CPU	1 socket, 2 cores
Memory	4 GB
Disk	64 GB, thin provisioned
Storage Controller	VMware Paravirtual (pvscsi)
Network	VMXNET 3

HowTo

Requirements

• ESX added to vCenter to build on
• Buildhost with packer installed (run packer init-command before building)
• ISO build tool in the PATH to be found by vsphere-iso packer plug-in
• For creating an OVA automatically (gitlab-ci build): tar

Configure Build Variables

All the variables which are changeable by default are in the variables.pkr.hcl. Most of them have reasonable defaults, but some don't (like vSphere build environment) and need to be set beforehand. You can overwrite these variables in the file, in a variable file or via commandline.

See the Packer documentation on user variables for details.

A lot of these variables are required for the build but do not have default values. In this case packer will search for environment variables starting with PKR_VAR_, e.g. PKR_VAR_vcenter_server. This is used in the automated builds with Gitlab-CI. You can either set these environment variables in your build environment or overwrite the defaults like described above.

Packer Variable	Default Value	Description
iso_url	https://...	Link to the WS2022 installation ISO file (see ws2022.pkr.hcl)
iso_checksum	sha256:....	SHA256 checksum of above ISO file (see ws2022.pkr.hcl)
vcenter_server	NONE	VMware vSphere vCenter to connect to for building with the vsphere-iso builder
vcenter_user	NONE	The user to connect with to the vCenter
vcenter_password	NONE	Above user's password
vcenter_datacenter	null	The name of the vSphere datacenter to build in
vcenter_cluster	null	The name of the cluster to build in
vcenter_resource_pool	null	The resource pool to create the VM in, if not specified uses the default pool
vcenter_datastore	null	The resource pool to create the VM in, if not specified uses the default pool
esx_host	null	The ESX to build on

To specify the right vCenter parameters, check the vsphere-iso documentation

The following variables are only taken into consideration on a Gitlab-CI build (see .gitlab-ci.yml) and not relevant if the packer build is called locally.

Gitlab-CI variable	Default Value	Description
SMB_PATH	NONE	Optional UNC path to the SMB share where to put the resulting OVA file - the user running Gitlab-Runner must have write access

How to use Packer

To create a Windows Server VM image using a vSphere ESX host:

cd <path-to-git-root-directory>
packer init -upgrade .
packer build .

Wait for the build to finish to find the generated OVA file in the build folder.

Default credentials

The default credentials for this VM image are:

Username	Password
Administrator	Passw0rd.

Implementation Details

• Retrying VMware tools installation in install-vmware-tools-from-iso.ps1 because sometimes the installation fails on first try and services are not available and thus the IP address of the VM is not recognized by vCenter nor Packer
• Allow RC 2300218 for win-update script on first provisioner because vmxnet drivers will be pulled from Windows Update breaking the SSH network connection from Packer
• Postpone first reboot provisioner for 30s to make sure the update script before finished before rebooting (connection loss because of vmxnet driver update)
• Run win-update.ps1 twice, because it finds new updates / replaces updates again

Resources

• packer-Win2019 (used as a base for this work - big kudos!)
• Hashicorp Windows Update Script
• A lot of StackExchange, Blogs, etc... - thank you all for publishing about these great small gotchas which block me sometimes