vSphere FIPS: Image Creation Overview
Image Creation Process
This diagram illustrates the image creation process:
The workflow on the left shows the creation of a base OS image in the vCenter vSphere client using inputs from Packer. The workflow on the right shows how DKP uses that same base OS image to create CAPI-enabled VM images for your cluster.
After creating the base image, the DKP image builder uses it to create a CAPI-enabled vSphere template that includes the Kubernetes objects for the cluster. You can use that resulting template with the DKP create cluster command to create the VM nodes in your cluster directly on a vCenter server. From that point, you can use DKP to provision and manage your cluster.