Building the VMware Ubuntu kubernetes OVA

Prerequisites

1. VMware ESXi or vSphere system
2. govc command available from govc
3. packer available from packer

First prepare your ESXi host

1. Enable ssh via the ESXi console

2. Enable the "Guest IP Hack" which will enable packer to infer the IP address of the guest.

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

3. Enable VNC access for packer

Modify the firewall rules to add

chmod 644 /etc/vmware/firewall/service.xml
chmod +t /etc/vmware/firewall/service.xml

Add this to /etc/vmware/firewall/service.xml

<service id="1000">
  <id>packer-vnc</id>
  <rule id="0000">
    <direction>inbound</direction>
    <protocol>tcp</protocol>
    <porttype>dst</porttype>
    <port>
      <begin>5900</begin>
      <end>5964</end>
    </port>
  </rule>
  <enabled>true</enabled>
  <required>true</required>
</service>

And restart the firewall service

chmod 444 /etc/vmware/firewall/service.xml
esxcli network firewall refresh

Create the OVA image

To create the OVA image there is a Makefile for the steps.

1. cp vars-sample.json vars.json
2. Edit vars.json for your ESXi installation
3. make build

Import back into ESXi

To import the new OVA back, run this command:

govc import.ova -name testkube VMware-ubuntu-kubernetes.ova

Login

The login/password for the VMware-ubuntu-kubernetes OVA image is kube/kube. Please change this password after logging in.