Use Packer to create VM templates for VMWare ESXi. Images can be used with terraform to bootstrap a k3s cluster

This repo builds 3 images, initially set up using cloud-init and then further customized using scripts during packer provisioning:

• ubuntu_2004-docker: ubuntu 20.04 LTS with docker installed and some other standard packages (see cloud-init for details)
• ubuntu_2004-k8s-nodhcp: ubuntu_2004-docker image with iscsi packages set up and all netplan configurations removed
• ubuntu_2004-k8s-cloudinit-ready: ubuntu_2004-k8s-nodhcp with cloud-init cleaned and ready for re-initialization

1. Update templates

2. Update json files with data from .envrc (assuming .envrc is complete)

   # reload all env variables
   direnv allow .
   
   # perform substitutions
   envsubst < ./templates/variables.json >! ./variables.json
   envsubst < ./templates/user-data >! ./ubuntu_2004/http/user-data
   envsubst < ./templates/meta-data >! ./ubuntu_2004/http/meta-data

3. Build all images (including push to ESXi vSphere):

   for IMAGE in $(find . -name "ubuntu*.json"); do
     # packer build -force -var-file=variables.json ${IMAGE}
     packer build -var-file=variables.json ${IMAGE}
   done

This creates 4 different machine images:

1. ubuntu-2004 -- standard image, has simple IPv4 DHCP enabled
2. ubuntu-2004-nodhcp -- standard image with /etc/netplan cleared. Must provide netplan config to get internet
3. ubuntu-2004-cloudinit -- standard image with cloudinit-guestinfo configured for vSphere
4. ubuntu-2004-cloudinit-guestinfo -- image with cloudinit-guestinfo configured for vSphere and /etc/netplan cleared - must provide netplan config.

• David-VTUK's Rancher-Pakcer
• Nick Charlton - Automating Ubuntu 2004 with Packer
• BeryJu - Automating Ubuntu 2004 with Packer
• Mile's Gray's series with Ubuntu and K8s