Overview of the Issue

When cloning a VM template with a RAM reservation, versions of the plugin prior to v1.3.0 copy the reservation. Since v1.3.0 the reservation is no longer copied as part of the clone. This resulted in a large increase in our datastore usage as vsphere backs unreserved RAM with a vswp file.

Reproduction Steps

• create a VM template with a RAM reservation as in the screen shot. the exact size of the reservation shouldn't matter.

• clone the template using vsphere clone 1.3.0. note that the destination template has no memory reservation set. changing the version of the plugin to 1.2.7 and repeating the clone results in the the memory reservation being set correctly.

Packer Version

v1.12.0

Plugin Version and Builders

v1.3.0

• vsphere-iso
• vsphere-clone

VMware vSphere Version

7.0.3.01900

Guest Operating System

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64

Simplified Packer Buildfile

packer {
  required_plugins {
    vsphere = {
      version = "= 1.3.0"
      source  = "github.com/hashicorp/vsphere"
    }
  }
}

source "vsphere-clone" "test" {
  template = "<template_name_with_ram_reservation>"
  folder   = "<folder>"
  vm_name  = "test"
  convert_to_template = true
  username                     = <username>
  password                     = <password>
  vcenter_server               = <server>
  cluster                      = <cluster>
  datastore                    = <datastore>
  ssh_username                 = "<ssh_username>"
  ssh_password                 = vault("<path/to/password>", "<keyname>")
}

build {
  name    = "provision"
  sources = ["source.vsphere-clone.rkenode"]
}

Operating System and Environment Details

CentOS Linux 7

Log Fragments and crash.log Files

NA