The Packer Plugin for VMware vSphere is a plugin for creating virtual machine images for use with VMware vSphere®.

To install this plugin add this code into your Packer configuration and run packer init

packer {
  required_plugins {
    vsphere = {
      version = "~> 1"
      source  = "github.com/vmware/vsphere"
    }
  }
}

Alternatively, you can use packer plugins install to manage installation of this plugin.

packer plugins install github.com/vmware/vsphere

The plugin includes builders and post-processors for creating virtual machine images, depending on your desired strategy:

• vsphere-iso - This builder starts from an ISO file and uses the vSphere API to build a virtual machine image on an ESX host.

• vsphere-clone - This builder clones a virtual machine from an existing template using the uses the vSphere API and then modifies and saves it as a new template.

• vsphere-supervisor - This builder deploys and publishes new virtual machine to a vSphere Supervisor cluster using VM Service.

• vsphere - This post-processor uploads an artifact to a vSphere endpoint. The artifact must be a VMX, OVA, or OVF file.

• vsphere-template - This post-processor uses an artifact from the vSphere post-processor. It then marks the virtual machine as a template and moves it to your specified path.