ESXi, Puppet Bolt, and the OVFTool

In a moment of quiet I started to think about how to improve my home lab VM deployment strategy although strategy is a strong word for it ! Currently I use basic server build ESXi virtual machines for 2K12 R2, 2K16, and 2K19 that have been sysprep’d and perform an autologon to set the machine name, IP details, and join the Domain. The Powershell script I use pulls variables from the vmx file or prompts me to set the details if I forget to add them. Not the most elegant of solutions but it did mean I could deploy a new VM in about 15 minutes albeit with a lot of manual intevention.