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Description

Currently there's no functional to install an ISO to an existing VM. Rephrasing in packer terms: there's no way to build a machine image in vsphere by re-using an existing VM.

As a matter of fact, judging by the lack of answers here, it doesn't seem to be possible for any hypervisor, not just vsphere.

Use Case(s)

• Limiting the existing VMs to certain number of pre-created ones. packer is for automated VMs creation, and if there's a bug in the logic that calls packer, there may be an explosion of creating new VMs.
• (our usecase) working around missing functionality in the plugin. For example, there's currently no way to create a pair of VMs connected as an active/active or active/passive cluster (that is having VMs with simultaneous access to the same "disk" or rather "disk file"). Such functional is also difficult to implement because it does not work well in vSphere to start with. E.g. if you try to destroy such VM that shares a disk you'll get a vague concurrent access error.