Reference for building VMware Harbor Virtual Appliance (OVA) using Packer

Requirements

MacOS or Linux Desktop
vCenter Server or Standalone ESXi host 6.x or greater
VMware OVFTool
Packer

packer builds the OVA on a remote ESXi host via the vmware-iso builder. This builder requires the SSH service running on the ESXi host, as well as GuestIPHack enabled via the command below.

esxcli system settings advanced set -o /Net/GuestIPHack -i 1

Step 1 - Clone the git repository

git clone https://github.com/lamw/harbor-appliance.git

Step 2 - Edit the photon-builder.json file to configure the vSphere endpoint for building the Harbor appliance

{
  "builder_host": "192.168.30.10",
  "builder_host_username": "root",
  "builder_host_password": "VMware1!",
  "builder_host_datastore": "vsanDatastore",
  "builder_host_portgroup": "VM Network"
}

Note: If you need to change the initial root password on the Harbor appliance, take a look at photon-version.json and http/photon-kickstart.json. When the OVA is produced, there is no default password, so this does not really matter other than for debugging purposes.

Step 3 - Start the build by running the build script which simply calls Packer and the respective build files