5093f3120e
This is a big commit, and I apologize in advance for the future
git-blames all pointing to me. This commit does a few things:
1. Merges the website/docs and website/www repo into a single website repo
to be in line with other HashiCorp projects
2. Updates to use middleman-hashicorp
3. Converts less to scss to be in line with other projects
4. Updates page styles to be in line with other projects
5. Optimizes images
6. Prepare for S3 + Fastly deployment with scripts, etc.
7. Removes blog posts (they have been transferred to hashicorp.com with
redirects in place
8. Updated sitemap generation script for better SEO
9. Fixed many broken links
10. Add description to all fields
108 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
108 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: "docs"
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page_title: "Box Format - VMware Provider"
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sidebar_current: "providers-vmware-boxes"
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description: |-
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As with every Vagrant provider, the Vagrant VMware providers have a custom box
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format.
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---
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# Boxes
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As with [every Vagrant provider](/docs/providers/basic_usage.html), the
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Vagrant VMware providers have a custom box format.
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This page documents the format so that you can create your own base boxes.
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Note that currently you must make these base boxes by hand. A future release
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of Vagrant will provide additional mechanisms for automatically creating such
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images.
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<div class="alert alert-info">
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<strong>Note:</strong> This is a reasonably advanced topic that
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a beginning user of Vagrant does not need to understand. If you are
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just getting started with Vagrant, skip this and use an available
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box. If you are an experienced user of Vagrant and want to create
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your own custom boxes, this is for you.
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</div>
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Prior to reading this page, please understand the
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[basics of the box file format](/docs/boxes/format.html).
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## Contents
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A VMware base box is a compressed archive of the necessary contents
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of a VMware "vmwarevm" file. Here is an example of what is contained
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in such a box:
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```
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$ tree
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.
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|-- disk-s001.vmdk
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|-- disk-s002.vmdk
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|-- ...
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|-- disk.vmdk
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|-- metadata.json
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|-- precise64.nvram
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|-- precise64.vmsd
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|-- precise64.vmx
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|-- precise64.vmxf
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0 directories, 17 files
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```
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The files that are strictly required for a VMware machine to function are:
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nvram, vmsd, vmx, vmxf, and vmdk files.
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There is also the "metadata.json" file used by Vagrant itself. This file
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contains nothing but the defaults which are documented on the
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[box format](/docs/boxes/format.html) page.
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When bringing up a VMware backed machine, Vagrant copies all of the contents
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in the box into a privately managed "vmwarevm" folder, and uses the first
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"vmx" file found to control the machine.
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<div class="alert alert-info">
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<strong>Vagrant 1.8 and higher support linked clones</strong>. Prior versions
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of Vagrant do not support linked clones. For more information on
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linked clones, please see the documentation.
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</div>
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## Installed Software
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Base boxes for VMware should have the following software installed, as
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a bare minimum:
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* SSH server with key-based authentication setup. If you want the box to
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work with default Vagrant settings, the SSH user must be set to accept
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the [insecure keypair](https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/blob/master/keys/vagrant.pub)
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that ships with Vagrant.
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* [VMware Tools](https://kb.vmware.com/kb/340) so that things such as shared
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folders can function. There are many other benefits to installing the tools,
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such as improved networking performance.
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## Optimizing Box Size
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Prior to packaging up a box, you should shrink the hard drives as much as
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possible. This can be done with `vmware-vdiskmanager` which is usually
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found in `/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library` for VMware Fusion. You first
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want to defragment then shrink the drive. Usage shown below:
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```
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$ vmware-vdiskmanager -d /path/to/main.vmdk
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...
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$ vmware-vdiskmanager -k /path/to/main.vmdk
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...
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```
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## Packaging
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Remove any extraneous files from the "vmwarevm" folder
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and package it. Be sure to compress the tar with gzip (done below in a
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single command) since VMware hard disks are not compressed by default.
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```
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$ cd /path/to/my/vm.vmwarevm
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$ tar cvzf custom.box ./*
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```
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