Packer - Windows Server 2019

This build configuration installs and configures Windows Server 2019 (both Base and Core) x86_64 base image using a fairly standard preseed config file, some shell scripts, and Ansible, and then generates both a Vagrant box file for VirtualBox and an AWS AMI.

This can be modified to use more Ansible roles, plays, and included playbooks to fully configure (or partially) configure a box file suitable for deployment for development environments. By default, the image created will have Ansible and Docker pre-installed

Requirements

The following software must be installed/present on your local machine before you can use Packer to build the Vagrant box file:

• Packer
• Vagrant
• VirtualBox
• Ansible

Note: By default, this config builds an AMI. For Packer to communicate with AWS, you must also setup your AWS access key and secret key using a shared credential file; remove the amazon-ebs builder from the Packer config or include the -only=virtualbox-iso flag when running a packer build.

Note: This config includes a post-processor that pushes the template box to Vagrant Cloud. For this to work you must set a VAGRANT_CLOUD_TOKEN environment variable; remove the vagrant-cloud post-processor from the Packer config to build the box locally and not push it to Vagrant Cloud.

Configuration Variables

Available variables are listed below:

version: ''

The version variable is used by Packer to help with tagging and naming. This is a cosmetic functionality to help you track you image version history. As seen below, this can be defined upon execution of the packer build command.

profile: 'default'

The AWS profile to build the AMI using. As mentioned above, for Packer to communicate with AWS, you must also setup your AWS access key and secret key using a shared credential file. Unless overridden upon execution of the packer build command, we will use the credentials and config defined for your default profile,

Usage

Make sure all the required software (listed above) is installed, then cd to the directory containing this README.md file, and run:

$ packer build -var 'profile=customprofile' -var 'version=customversion' win2019-core.json

or

$ packer build -var 'profile=customprofile' -var 'version=customversion' win2019-gui.json

After a few minutes, Packer should tell you the box was generated successfully, and the AMI was uploaded to AWS.

Testing built boxes

There's an included Vagrantfile that allows quick testing of the built Vagrant boxes. From this same directory, run the following command after building the box:

$ vagrant up

Note: If Vagrant runs into any issues mounting the VirtualBox shared folders, you can try to work around this issue by install the vagrant-vbguest plugin - vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest

License

GNU GPL v3

Author Information

Alex Carberry

Future Features

• Install virtualization quest tools
• Compatible as an Ansible host (client)
• "Cleanup"
• "Debloat" the OS
• Configure Windows Updates
• Configure Windows Defender
• Configure RDP
• Manage UAC
• Disable screensaver