Packer: vsphere post-processor should generate a template (not a VM)

[hh]

Scenario: vsphere post-processor should generate a template

In order to produce a usable artifact
A packer user
wants to generate a vsphere template

Given I have the vsphere post-processor enabled
When and I run packer build 
Then I should see and template generated
And I should not see a virtual machine generated

[synthesizerpatel]

Not to rain on the parade, but you can only generate templates from running VMs in vsphere.

At the very least you'd need to:

• Generate VM
• Upload it to vSphere
• Convert VM to template
• Remove original VM

[rickard-von-essen]

Provide a example of doing this with OVF tool, and why it's not possible to achive with options.

[marema31]

I'm currently use the govc cli tools for this in the shell-local post-processor (mark the vm as a template).

For the records I'm also using it to modify the VMX before the conversion as template (for compliance with IT security guys rules). Theses modification must be done on the imported VM before converting it to template. That's why the modification from the PR wouldn't fit my need.

Before sawing this PR, I wanted to try to create a post-processor for this two actions with the options:

vmx_data = Array of string to modify/add value to the VMX (could be empty)
mark_as_template= Boolean

I suppose that would cover most of the needs, the more specifics ones could always be accessible in the same way I currently use(shell-local with govc tool).
For this reason, it must be a different post-processor than the vsphere (that do the ovftool) or, I would prefer, by the addition of a boolean to the vsphere post-processor: import_artifact (that must be true by default for compatibility reasons) to allow several calls of the post-processor without re-importing the VM.

[SwampDragons]

I believe this should have been solved by the introduction of the vsphere-template post-processor, so I am going to close this.

[hashibot[bot]]

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