During the first plan execution of a new VM based on a Windows Server Core VM Template, my Terraform plan timed out on Guest Customizations. The same plan had worked without issue previously with an existing Windows Template, so I was a little confused as to what had gone wrong. When I checked the console of the cloned VMs in vSphere, I found that it was stuck at the boot screen not able to find the Operating System.
Operating System not found – Obviously having issues booting into the templated disk.
After a little digging around, I came across this post which describes the error being related to the VM Template being configured with EFI Firmware which is now the default for vSphere 6.7 VMs. Upon cloning, Terraform deploys the new VM with a BIOS Firmware resulting in the disk not able to boot.
Checking the VM Template, it did in-fact have EFI set.
An option was to reconfigure the Template and make it default to BIOS, however the Terraform vSphere Provider was updated last year to include an option to set the Firmware on deployment.
In the instance declaration file we can set firmware as shown below
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# Guest OS # guest_id = "${data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.guest_id}" scsi_type = "${data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.scsi_type}" firmware = "${var.vsphere_vm_firmware}" |
If we set it up such that it reads that value from a variable we only have to configure the efi or bios setting once in the terraform.tfvars files.
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# VM specifications vsphere_vm_resource_pool ="TPM03-AS" vsphere_vm_template = "TPM03-AS/WIN2K19-TEST" vsphere_vm_firmware = "efi" |
In the variables.tf file the variable is set and has a default value of bios set.
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variable "vsphere_vm_firmware" { description = "Firmware set to bios or efi depending on Template" default = "bios" } |
Once this was configured, the plan was able to successfully deploy the new Windows Template without issue and Guest Customizations where able to continue.
Terraform Version: 0.11.7
Resources:
https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-vsphere/issues/441
https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-vsphere/pull/485
https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/vsphere/r/virtual_machine.html#firmware
