vagrantvspherevmware-workstationvagrant-windowsvagrant-plugin

vagrant-vsphere: how to create a .box file?


I want to use vagrant-vsphere and went through the steps described in https://github.com/nsidc/vagrant-vsphere/blob/master/README.md

Installation went fine. Now I am at this step:

After installing the plugin, you must create a vSphere box. The example_box directory contains a metadata.json file that can be used to create a dummy box with the command:

tar cvzf dummy.box ./metadata.json

How do I create this dummy.box?

Am I right to suppose that I need to create a VMware base box? I read here that

A VMware base box is a compressed archive of the necessary contents of a VMware "vmwarevm" file.

But I cannot find a vmwarevm file.

... I am on Windows using vmware workstation 12.


Solution

  • Go to: https://github.com/nsidc/vagrant-vsphere/tree/master/example_box and download the metadata.json file. Move this file to your vagrant project directory and run the following command in your terminal:

    tar cvzf dummy.box ./metadata.json
    

    This command will output a file with the name dummy.box, this is what you use on your Vagrantfile.

    I am not sure but this dummy box I think is supposed to be just a filler cause all Vagrant projects require to have a box but since you are using the vSphere plugin you will actually be cloning VMs from templates that are already on your vSphere server.