Creating a base OS image from DVD ISO files is a one-time process. Building a base OS image creates a base vSphere template in your vSphere environment. The base OS image is used by Konvoy Image Builder (KIB) to create a VM template to configure Kubernetes nodes by the DKP vSphere provider.

Depending on the cluster-api provider, a packer user configuration will vary. For vSphere, a user “builder“ with password “builder“ is required by default by packer. This user should have administrator privileges. It is possible to configure a custom user and password when building the OS image, however, that requires the Konvoy Image Builder (KIB) configuration to be overridden.

While creating the base OS image, it is important to take into consideration the following elements:

  1. Storage configuration: D2iQ recommends customizing disk partitions and not configuring a SWAP partition.

  2. Network configuration: as KIB must download and install packages, activating the network is required.

  3. Connect to Red Hat: if using RHEL, registering with Red Hat is required to configure software repositories and install software packages.

  4. Software selection: D2iQ recommends choosing Minimal Install.

  5. Create User: In the packer template, a user "builder" with password "builder" is configured by default, so creating this user with administration privileges is a requirement. Please note that, it is possible to configure a custom user and password when building the OS image, however, that requires the Konvoy Image Builder (KIB) configuration to be overridden. To override the default credentials in KIB, a file (overrides.yaml) with the following content should be created:

    To override the default credentials in KIB by creating a file (overrides.yaml) with the following content:

    ---
packer:  
  ssh_username: "<USERNAME>"    
  ssh_password: "<PASSWORD>"
    CODE

The next step is to create a vSphere VM template that contains the CAPI and Kubernetes objects.