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vsphere-iso multiple NIC support #8719

@jhawk28

Description

@jhawk28

Multiple NIC

It would be useful to define multiple NICs on a VM instead of needing to do it in a post processor. Each NIC can be assigned to a network. The user should also be able to define the adapter type for each nic. This has been requested before on the old vsphere-iso plugin: jetbrains-infra/packer-builder-vsphere#182

Use cases

Create any software networking style vms. Firewalls (pfsense), routers (vyos), etc all would require multiple NICs to function.
Load balancers will often hide their workers behind a separate network.

Workaround

Currently, the only workaround is to define additional adapters using govc in a local-shell provisioner.

Questions

How should the NICs be defined? The current configuration parameters are network and networkCard. It should have the ability to define multiple networks and their associated nic type. The most backwards compatible change would be to change them to string slices. This would allow the user to keep their old configuration, but add additional NICs/Networks as they need. Another alternative would be to add a new field and nic+network structure that allows additional definitions.

Should we create a configuration converter for configuration updates? If we decide to change the configuration, is there a mechanism to update old non-compatible configs?

Is the builder the correct place to put this sort of capability? Do any of the other builders do multiple NICs?

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