Packer templates for Windows

Overview

This repository contains templates for Windows that can create Vagrant boxes using Packer.

Core Boxes

64-bit boxes:

• win2012r2-datacenter-nocm, VMware 4.3GB/VirtualBox 4.2GB
• win2012-datacenter-nocm, VMware 3.7GB/VirtualBox 3.5GB
• win2008r2-datacenter-nocm, VMware 3.0GB/VirtualBox 2.8GB
• win81x64-enterprise-nocm, VMware 4.0GB/VirtualBox 3.6GB
• win8x64-enterprise-nocm, VMware 3.6GB/VirtualBox 3.3GB
• win7x64-enterprise-nocm, VMware 3.5GB/VirtualBox 3.2GB

Building the Vagrant boxes

To build all the boxes, you will need both VirtualBox and VMware Fusion or Workstation installed.

A GNU Make Makefile drives the process via the following targets:

make        # Build all the box types (VirtualBox & VMware)
make test   # Run tests against all the boxes
make list   # Print out individual targets
make clean  # Clean up build detritus

To build one particular box, e.g. eval-win7x86-enterprise, for just one provider, e.g. VirtualBox, first run make list subcommand:

make list

This command prints the list of available boxes. Then you can build one particular box for choosen provider:

make virtualbox/eval-win7x86-enterprise

Tests

The tests are written in Serverspec and require the vagrant-serverspec plugin to be installed with:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-serverspec

The Makefile has individual targets for each box type with the prefix test-* should you wish to run tests individually for each box.

Similarly there are targets with the prefix ssh-* for registering a newly-built box with vagrant and for logging in using just one command to do exploratory testing. For example, to do exploratory testing on the VirtualBox training environmnet, run the following command:

make ssh-box/virtualbox/win2008r2-standard-nocm.box

Upon logout make ssh-* will automatically de-register the box as well.

Makefile.local override

You can create a Makefile.local file alongside the Makefile to override some of the default settings. It is most commonly used to override the default configuration management tool, for example with Chef:

# Makefile.local
CM := chef

Changing the value of the CM variable changes the target suffixes for the output of make list accordingly.

Possible values for the CM variable are:

• nocm - No configuration management tool
• chef - Install Chef Client
• chefdk - Install Chef Development Kit
• chef-workstation - Install Chef Workstation
• puppet - Install Puppet
• salt - Install Salt

You can also specify a variable CM_VERSION for all configuration management tools to override the default of latest. The value of CM_VERSION should have the form x.y or x.y.z, such as CM_VERSION := 11.12.4

When changing the value of the CM variable to one of the chef-based configuration management tools, it is relevant to note that recent versions of chef require a license in order to use. Due to this, specifying the default version of "latest" for the CM_VERSION field will result in using the most recent "free" version that doesn't require a license. If the user wishes to use the most recent version that DOES requires licensing, however, the user will need to explicitly specify "licensed" for CM_VERSION. Specifying "licensed" for CM_VERSION will then result in using the most recently available licensed version. More information on how to accept the chef-client license via configuration after building a template can be found at Accepting the Chef License.

It is also possible to specify a HW_VERSION if a specific hardware version is to be used for a build. This is commonly used to provide compatibility with newer versions of VMware Workstation. For example, you may indicate version 14 of Workstation: HW_VERSION := 14.

For configuration management tools (such as Salt), you can specify a variable CM_OPTIONS. This variable will be passed to the installer for the configuration management tool. For information on possible values please read the documentation for the respective configuration management tool.

Another use for Makefile.local is to override the default locations for the Windows install ISO files.

For Windows, the ISO path variables are:

• EVAL_WIN10_X64
• EVAL_WIN10_X86
• EVAL_WIN2008R2_X64
• EVAL_WIN2012R2_X64
• EVAL_WIN7_X64
• EVAL_WIN7_X86
• EVAL_WIN81_X64
• EVAL_WIN81_X86
• EVAL_WIN8_X64
• WIN2008R2_X64
• WIN2012_X64
• WIN2012R2_X64
• WIN7_X64_ENTERPRISE
• WIN7_X64_PRO
• WIN7_X86_ENTERPRISE
• WIN7_X86_PRO
• WIN81_X64_ENTERPRISE
• WIN81_X64_PRO
• WIN81_X86_ENTERPRISE
• WIN81_X86_PRO
• WIN8_X64_ENTERPRISE
• WIN8_X64_PRO
• WIN8_X86_ENTERPRISE
• WIN8_X86_PRO

You can also override these setting, such as with

WIN81_X64_PRO := file:///Volumes/MSDN/en_windows_8.1_professional_vl_with_update_x64_dvd_4065194.iso

Acknowledgments

Parallels provides a Business Edition license of their software to run on the basebox build farm.

SmartyStreets is providing basebox hosting for the boxcutter project.