This is a basic Packer configuration which can be used to build Ubuntu 18.04 VM template remotely on Vmware vSphere.

Prerequisites

• Packer
• Packer Builder for VMware vSphere
• Ubuntu Server ISO
• vSphere vCenter accessible from your workstation
• DHCP server for VM template building

Usage

• cp vars.json.example vars.json
• edit vars.json according to your environment
• run packer build -var-file=vars.json ubuntu.json

Vmware customization issues fix

• Current version of open-vm-tools does not support netplan in VM customization. The following workaround is done in provisioning script:
  • ‘disable_vmware_customization: false’ is added to /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg
• tmp dir issue fix:
  • line D /tmp 1777 root root - is commented out from /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf