How to Add Static IP address in variables.json file and winbuild.json for Windows Server Packer Build

Is this the correct format to add the "Network_interface"

{
"builders": [
{
"CPUs": "{{user `cpu_num`}}",
"RAM": "{{user `mem_size`}}",
"RAM_reserve_all": true,
"cluster": "{{user `vsphere_compute_cluster`}}",
"communicator": "winrm",
"convert_to_template": "true",
"datacenter": "{{user `vsphere_dc_name`}}",
"datastore": "{{user `vsphere_datastore`}}",
"disk_controller_type": "lsilogic-sas",
"firmware": "bios",
"floppy_files": [
"SetUp/win19/autounattend.xml",
"SetUp/setup.ps1",
"SetUp/vmtools.cmd"
],
"folder": "{{user `vsphere_folder`}}",
"guest_os_type": "windows2019srvNext_64Guest",
"host": "{{user `vsphere_host`}}",
"insecure_connection": "true",
"iso_paths": [
"{{user `os_iso_path`}}",
"{{user `vmtools_iso_path`}}"
],
"network_adapters": [
{
"network": "{{user `vsphere_portgroup_name`}}",
"network_card": "vmxnet3"
}
],
"network_interface": [
{
"ipv4_address": "ADD IP Address",
"ipv4_netmask": "24",
"ipv4_gateway": "ADD GW Address",
"dns_server_list": "ADD DNS Server ip address"
}
],
"password": "{{user `vsphere_password`}}",
"storage": [
{
"disk_size": "{{user `disk_size`}}",
"disk_thin_provisioned": true
}
],
"type": "vsphere-iso",
"username": "{{user `vsphere_user`}}",
"vcenter_server": "{{user `vsphere_server`}}",
"vm_name": "{{user `vsphere_template_name`}}",
"winrm_password": "{{user `winadmin_password`}}",
"winrm_username": "Administrator"
}

Hey @henryc. Great questions. It looks like you may be using the old template version. Actually I need to look and see if I have updated the packer builds repo there. Which OS are you installing, is it Windows Server 2019 or 2022? 

Packer has moved from the JSON format which is the older format to a newer HCL extension and language for Packer to help consolidate on their syntax I believe with Terraform, etc. Let me take a look at the latest template I have locally and see what needs to be pushed up to the repo.

Also, do you have DHCP running in the network? This would be the easiest way to get the machine provisioned and converted to a template.

Also, to answer your question in the comment on the blog post, Packer will automatically convert the new build to a virtual machine template once the process completes.

Let me know if these tidbits make sense. Thanks Henry.

@henryc It looks like with Windows, we can do this with the autounattend.xml file. You would use the following to set a static IP address for your windows build. Just replace with the IP you want to use in the "networking" section.

<Networking>
                <Interfaces>
                    <Interface wcm:action="add" wcm:keyValue="1">
                        <Ipv4Settings>
                            <IpAddress>192.168.1.100</IpAddress>
                            <SubnetMask>255.255.255.0</SubnetMask>
                            <Gateway>192.168.1.1</Gateway>
                            <DnsServers>
                                <DnsServer>8.8.8.8</DnsServer>
                                <DnsServer>8.8.4.4</DnsServer>
                            </DnsServers>
                        </Ipv4Settings>
                    </Interface>
                </Interfaces>
            </Networking>

Since we are already calling the autounattend file in the build, we should be good to just add the static config and be good to go.

Hey @henryc I am not sure what happened with my last message, think it disappeared maybe due to the long code pasting I did for unattend file. Let me know if you saw it though. I will update the GitHub repo with static address config.