When you are building Windows Server 2012 R2 base images (vSphere Templates) using packer on vSphere (using vmware-iso packer builder); the process usually relies on the windows server to get an IP address automatically via DHCP. This allows the packer builder to then communicate to the server over WinRM and complete the provisioning. What happens when there is no DHCP available in your vSphere VM Network? The easy solution is to have the bootstrap of the windows server set a static IP for the server.

You’ve downloaded your purchased Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft, and you’ve managed to create a bootable UEFI USB stick. Now you’ve decided to run Windows 10 in VMWare Fusion Pro on your Mac. Yet the USB stick can NOT be booted from. There is a solution. VMWare fusion has some (unsupported) EFI options you can enable to effect a USB boot. First you’ll want to create a Windows 10 VM in VMWare Fusion.