v0.13.0

Note

Release Date: 2022-07-26
Previous Versioning: v22.07

Enhancement:

• Adds Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
• Adds CentOS 9 Stream.
• Adds Rocky Linux 9.
• Adds AlmaLinux OS 9.
• Adds SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15.
• Adds option for setting the number of video displays and the size for the video memory for both Windows 11 and 10, which is useful for virtual desktop use cases (e.g., Horizon). The ability to set the number of displays was added in v1.0.6 of packer-plugin-vsphere.
• Adds a common option to export machine image artifacts (.ovf,.vmdk, and .mf) to an output path.
• Removes the default requirement for a trusted root authority certificate to be imported and
  trusted by each machine image build. This will allow project users to get started more quickly
  without a pre-requisite.

Refactor:

• Refactors builds to use local variables for virtual machine image names and descriptions.
• Refactors builds to use local variables for ISO paths and checksums.
• Refactors builds to use local variables for manifest data and output path.

Chore:

• Updates vSphere to version 7.0.3D or higher to address a known issue with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 with EFI firmware.
• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.0.6.
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.2.5.
• Updates Rocky Linux 8 to use other4xLinuxGuest64.
• Updates Almalinux 8 to use other4xLinuxGuest64.
• Removes the deprecated CentOS 8 option; end-of-life as of December 31, 2021.
• Removes the deprecated Windows Server 2016 option; end-of-life as of January 11, 2022.

Note

• Supports 15.3 / 15 Service Pack 3.
• HTTP-based deployment only. Disk-based deployment planned.

Full Changelog:

v0.12.0...v0.13.0

v0.12.0

Note

Release Date: 2022-06-27
Previous Versioning: v22.06

Chore:

• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.8.2.
• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.0.5.
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.2.3.
• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/vsphere to >= 2.2.0.
• Updates vSphere to version 7.0.3 or higher.
• Updates Windows Server 2022 to June 2022 (US English) release.
• Updates Windows 11 to June 2022 (US English) release.
• Updates vm_guest_os_type for Windows Server 2022 guest ID to windows2019srvNext_64Guest.

Full Changelog:

v0.11.0...v0.12.0

v0.11.0

Note

Release Date: 2022-05-31
Previous Versioning: v22.05

Chore:

• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.0.4.
• Updates required_plugins and packer-plugin-windows-update to >= 0.14.1.
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.2.1.
• Updates Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 to 8.6 release.
• Updates Rocky Linux 8 to 8.6 release.
• Updates Almalinux 8 to 8.6 release.
• Updates CentOS Stream 8 checksum to latest release.
• Updates Windows Server 2022 to April 2022 (US English) release.
• Updates Windows 11 to May 2022 (US English) release.
• Updates requirements to include VMware Photon OS 4 as a tested operating system.
• Updates requirements to include Ubuntu 22.04 as a tested operating system.

Full Changelog:

v0.10.0...v0.11.0

v0.10.0

Note

Release Date: 2022-04-28
Previous Versioning: v22.04

Enhancement:

• Adds Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS (#185)
• Adds an option to generate a custom build script. (#188)

Bugfix:

• Updates the Python interpreter for Ansible on AlmaLinux to use /usr/libexec/platform-python. (#182)
• Adds the use of build_password to the Linux distributions to ensure use of set-envvars.sh works as expected. (#197)
• Updates the SHA256 checksum for the CentOS 7 .iso CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-2009.iso. (#201)

Chore:

• Updates the Windows Server 2022 February 2022 (US English) release. (#192)
• Updates the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS to 20.04.4 release. (#184)

New Contributors:

• @DSI-BenThomas made their first contribution in #193
• @wfyanmnm made their first contribution in #201

Full Changelog:

v0.9.0...v0.10.0

v0.9.0

Note

Release Date: 2022-03-17 🍀
Previous Versioning: v22.03

Chore:

• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.8.0.
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.1.7.
• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/vsphere to >= 2.1.1.

Full Changelog:

v0.8.0...v0.9.0

v0.8.0

Note

Release Date: 2022-02-21
Previous Versioning: v22.01

Enhancement:

• Updates the configuration of Linux machine images to use the Ansible roles instead of shell scripts.

Chore:

• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.7.10.
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.1.5.

Full Changelog:

v0.7.0...v0.8.0

v0.7.0

Note

Release Date: 2022-01-21
Previous Versioning: v22.01

Enhancement:

• Updates the notes to automatically include the Packer version and a build_version.
• Updates the naming for the machine image output and includes a build_version (e.g.,linux-photon-4-v22.01).
• Updates all Microsoft Windows Server machine image builds to a default of 4096 MB of memory to increase performance during operating system patching.

Chore:

• Updates the structure of the subdirectories in builds/.
• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.7.9.
• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.0.3.
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.1.4.
• Updates Microsoft Windows 11 Professional to use virtual trusted platform module (vTPM) and removes experimental project support. vTPM is now supported by packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.0.3.
• Updates VMware Photon OS 4.0 to Revision 2.
• Adds configurable data source provisioning for VMware Photon OS 4.0. Revision 2 adds support for secondary devices with kickstart. Edit the common_data_source in common.pkvars.hcl from http to disk. The build will attach an on-demand .iso as the secondary CD-ROM for the kickstart. This is useful for environments that can not use HTTP-based kickstart.
• Adds a GitHub Action on pull requests to check code quality using linters.
• Updates all of project code to address issues found by the linter(s).

Full Changelog:

v0.6.0...v0.7.0

v0.6.0

Note

Release Date: 2021-11-09
Previous Versioning: v21.11

Enhancement:

• Adds support for cloud-init and the [VMware] data source introduced in cloud-init v21.3 for Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS

Important

Uncomment these lines in the script for Ubuntu 20.04 and guest customization will be performed by VMware Tools vs. cloud-init.

# Uncomment below if guest customization will be performed by VMware Tools.
# touch /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99.disable-network-config.cfg
# echo "network: {config: disabled}" >> /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99.disable-network-config.cfg

• Adds custom disk partitioning for Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS and Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS
• Updates Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to efi-secure.
• Updates all certificates to the PEM-encoded .cer format.
• Adds example Terraform plans for deployment testing.
• Adds an Ansible playbook example to create a custom role in vSphere for Packer.

Full Changelog:

v0.5.1...v0.6.0

v0.5.1

Note

Release Date: 2021-10-20
Previous Versioning: v21.10.1

• Updates LICENSE and NOTICE to BSD-2.
• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.7.7.
• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.0.2.
• Updates Linux distributions to generate new host keys on first-boot.
• Adds option to usefloppy_content included in packer-plugin-vsphere releasev1.0.2. Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS will toggle to use floppy_content from http_content when common_data_source = "disk" is enabled.
• Updates VMware Photon OS 4.0 to Revision 1.
• Adds Microsoft Windows 11 Professional as experimental until vsphere-iso supports vTPM.
• Adds support for skip_import Adds to packer-plugin-vsphere in v1.0.2. When set to true the virtual machine will not be imported into the content library. This is useful for testing/debugging. Defaults to false.

Full Changelog:

v0.5.0...v0.5.1

v0.5.0

Note

Release Date: 2021-10-11
Previous Versioning: v21.10

• Adds the config.sh to create config/*.prkvars.hcl (default) files from the examples in builds/.

• Adds the option for create >1 set of configuration set by passing an argument to config.sh (e.g. config.sh config/us-west-1) and the pass the configuration set to build.sh (e.g. build.sh config/us-west-1).

• Use of the content library is now optional by updating the config/common.pkvars.hcl settings to the following:

  common_template_conversion     = true
  common_content_library    = null
  common_content_library_ovf     = false
  common_content_library_destroy = false

• Adds support for a SOCKS proxy by editing config/proxy.pkvars.hcl.

• Adds the ability to set the IP address to bind the HTTP server by editing the common_http_ip in config/common.pkvars.hcl from null to an IP address on the Packer host:

  common_http_ip = "172.16.11.100"

• Add configurable data source provisioning for Linux images. By default, HTTP is used for the kickstart. By editing the common_data_source in config/common.pkvars.hcl from http to disk the build will use a disk-based method, such as a .iso as the secondary CD-ROM. This is useful for environments that can not communicate back to the Packer host's HTTP server.

  common_data_source = "disk"

• Renames all certificates to *.ctr.example and *.pb7.example. Please add your own custom certificates to the directories per the README.md.

• Adds the ability for Packer to be run from any directory by including the use of $(path.cwd)/.

• Adds the ansible provisioner to Linux builds for base configuration using roles. More updates to follow.

• Adds information on least privilege service account using a custom role in vSphere.

• Adds a Terraform example for creation of the custom role in vSphere.

• Updates manifests to use manifests/ and a JSON output based on the timestamp.

• Updates manifests to use include relevant data in the JSON output for the build.

• Adds RHEL 7 and CentoOS 7 back to the builds per requests.

• Refactors RHEL and RHEL derivative kickstarts templates.

• Adds Windows 10 Professional.

• Updates PhotonOS to efi-secure.

• Updates Ubuntu 20.04 LTS to efi-secure.

• Adds vendor provided filename and checksums to the build examples.

• Updates CONTRIBUTING.md with the contributor workflow.

• Adds headers to various scripts and files, as needed.

• Add public keys and specific Terraform files to .gitignore.

• Updates issue templates to use forms.

• Various bugfixes and code cleanliness.

• Bumped Packer to >= 1.7.6.

• Thanks to the new contributors: @sestegra, @metabsdm, and @gcblack!

New Contributors:

• @metabsd made their first contribution in #81

Full Changelog:

v0.4.1...v0.5.0