Packer: vmware builder has hardcoded scsi/lsilogic controller

[routelastresort]

Currently, the VMware builder (iso/step_create_vmx and vmx/step_clone_vmx) only supports SCSI disks. I just made custom -ide versions of the builders for myself, but this may impact other people as well. (specifically, vApps with IDE disk with no serious I/O needs). Yes, SCSI seems to be the de-facto standard (I've seen it hard-coded in many other cloud/virtualization tools), but it definitely may be impacting other users.

[rickard-von-essen]

As I see it the main reason to support IDE or SATA is that some OS's might not boot (as easily) with SATA. Both parallels and virtualbox have a configuration parameter for this, see VirtualBox - ISO: hard_drive_interface

[routelastresort]

So @rickard-von-essen - the virtualbox version defaults to IDE, but the VMware currently defaults to SCSI - does it make sense that a patch for VMware would add IDE support, but leave SCSI as the default, for existing workflows?

VirtualBox:
hard_drive_interface (string) - The type of controller that the primary hard drive is attached to, defaults to "ide". When set to "sata", the drive is attached to an AHCI SATA controller.

[mitchellh]

@routelastresort I'd be okay with this.

[mitchellh]

This is fixed for VMX buidler.

[mauilion]

For others searching for this. I found that you can provide your own vmx template and in that template configure the disk to use sata or whatever you want.

[mitchellh]

Going to say fixed due to @mauilion's comment. A good workaround. if someone submits a PR to add a choice for Packer to automatically set IDE vs SCSI, I'd accept that as well.

[splashx]

Definitely not fixed as vmware-iso has nothing to do with vmware-vmx in the user's perspective.

[mcandre]

+1, as MINIX lacks support for SCSI drives, so MINIX guests are therefore incompatible with VMware provider until packer JSON's can successfully specify IDE rather than SCSI. Some atypical guest VM's like macOS also prefer SATA interfaces over SCSI, for those users with Apple hardware testing applications in different macOS version environments.

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