Reference for building PhotonOS NFS Virtual Appliance (OVA) using Packer

Requirements

MacOS or Linux Desktop
vCenter Server or Standalone ESXi host 6.x or greater
VMware OVFTool 4.4.1 (x86)
Packer 1.6.4+ (x86)

Step 1 - Clone the git repository

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

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