This packer workflow is very dated at this point. It will not work out of the box with current versions of packer. Additionaly it doesn't use winrm which is highly advised for building windows images. Take a look at this newer repo for a current template for windows.
---> https://github.com/trodemaster/packer-win-pc
packer.io template and related scripts for building Windows Server 2012 r2 ESXi virtual machines.
Based off of https://github.com/joefitzgerald/packer-windows
This is a simplified version of our Windows Server 2012 r2 packer template for ESXi/vCloud Director. I'm posting this to share some different approaches to building the windows image and related code.
- Boot from pvscsi virtual disk adapter
- Use vmxnet3 virtual network adapter
- Build the image using a commercial ssh server from http://www.bitvise.com/ssh-server
- Running windows updates from a packer shell provisioner
- Using -var-file to hold final password and wsus server settings per packer build machine
- Uninstalling the SSH server on shutdown
- Improved cleanup of the disk using dism for smaller vmdk size
- Setting a wsus group and local IP to speed up build time
- Installing VMware tools from a specific installer with powershell
├── SDelete.zip http://download.sysinternals.com/files/SDelete.zip
├── certmgr.exe Part of VMware tools install
├── pvscsi Extract from VMware tools installer http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2032184
│ ├── pvscsi.cat
│ ├── pvscsi.inf
│ ├── pvscsi.sys
│ └── txtsetup.oem
├── setup64.exe VMware tools installer
├── ultradefrag-portable-6.0.4.bin.amd64.zip http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultradefrag/files/stable-release/6.0.4/ultradefrag-portable-6.0.4.bin.amd64.zip
├── vmware.cer Part of VMware tools install
└── vmxnet3 Extract from VMware tools installer http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2032184
├── vmxnet3n61x64.sys
├── vmxnet3n61x86.sys
├── vmxnet3ndis6.cat
├── vmxnet3ndis6.inf
└── vmxnet3ndis6ver.dll
This doc will tell you how to get all the drivers and needed components for populating the FILES directory. http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc/GUID-7E1225DC-9CC6-401A-BE40-D78110F9441C.html
I recommend getting ahold of a Windows Server 2012 r2 with update .iso to use. You will need to place the .iso into the ISO directory and make sure the checksum and file names match the template .json file.
To specify your local wsus Server you will need to make a copy of the Example-privatedata.json file. In this privatedata.json file add your windows image password, wsus IP and wsus group. You will need to have a wsus server setup with the groups and configured to allow the registry settings of the client to specify the group.
Building the image will require the var file as shown below.
packer build --force -var-file privatedata.json WinSrv2012r2.json