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content/posts/k8s-on-vsphere-node-template-with-packer/index.md
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---
title: "K8s on vSphere: Building a Node Template With Packer" # Title of the blog post.
title: "K8s on vSphere: Building a Kubernetes Node Template With Packer" # Title of the blog post.
date: 2022-12-10T17:00:00-06:00 # Date of post creation.
# lastmod: 2022-12-03T10:41:17-08:00 # Date when last modified
description: "Using HashiCorp Packer to automatically build Kubernetes node templates on vSphere." # Description used for search engine.
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- packer
comment: true # Disable comment if false.
---
I've been leveraging the open-source Tanzu Community Edition Kubernetes distribution for a little while now, both [in my home lab](/tanzu-community-edition-k8s-homelab) and at work, so I was gutted by the news that VMware was [abandoning the project](https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/community-edition). TCE had been a pretty good fit for my needs, and now I needed to search for a replacement. VMware is offering a free version of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid as a replacement, but it comes with a license solely for non-commercial use so I wouldn't be able to use it at work. And I'd really like to use the same products in both environments to make development and testing easier on me.
I've been leveraging the open-source Tanzu Community Edition Kubernetes distribution for a little while now, both [in my home lab](/tanzu-community-edition-k8s-homelab) and at work, so I was disappointed to learn that VMware was [abandoning the project](https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/community-edition). TCE had been a pretty good fit for my needs, and now I needed to search for a replacement. VMware is offering a free version of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid as a replacement, but it comes with a license solely for non-commercial use so I wouldn't be able to use it at work. And I'd really like to use the same solution in both environments to make development and testing easier on me.
There are a bunch of great projects for running Kubernetes in development/lab environments, and others optimized for much larger enterprise environments, but I struggled to find a product that felt like a good fit for both in the way TCE was. My workloads are few and pretty simple so most enterprise K8s variants (Tanzu included) would feel like overkill, but I do need to ensure everything remains highly-available in the data centers at work.
So I set out to build my own! In the next couple of posts, I'll share the details of how I'm using Terraform to provision production-ready vanilla Kubernetes clusters on vSphere (complete with the vSphere Container Storage Interface plugin!) in a consistent and repeatable way. I also plan to document one of the ways I'm leveraging these clusters, which is using them as a part of a Gitlab CI/CD pipeline to churn out weekly VM template builds so I never again have to worry about my templates being out of date.
Plus, I thought it would be a fun learning experience to roll my own Kubernetes on vSphere!
I've learned a ton in the process (and still have a lot more to learn), but today I'll start simply by describing how I'm leveraging Packer to create a single VM template ready to enter service as a Kubernetes compute node.
In the next couple of posts, I'll share the details of how I'm using Terraform to provision production-ready vanilla Kubernetes clusters on vSphere (complete with the vSphere Container Storage Interface plugin!) in a consistent and repeatable way. I also plan to document one of the ways I'm leveraging these clusters, which is using them as a part of a Gitlab CI/CD pipeline to churn out weekly VM template builds so I never again have to worry about my templates being out of date.
I have definitely learned a ton in the process (and still have a lot more to learn), but today I'll start by describing how I'm leveraging Packer to create a single VM template ready to enter service as a Kubernetes compute node.
## What's Packer, and why?
[HashiCorp Packer](https://www.packer.io/) is a free open-source tool designed to create consistent, repeatable machine images. It's pretty killer as a part of a CI/CD pipeline to kick off new builds based on a schedule or code commits, but also works great for creating builds on-demand. Packer uses the [HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL)](https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/docs/templates/hcl_templates) to describe all of the properties of a VM build in a concise and readable format.