The Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) custom image creation process utilizes Packer and Ansible. Packer builds the machine image, while Ansible playbooks are used to install and configure the software packages within that image. The ansible/groupvars/all/defaults.yaml file within the nutanix-kps-image-builder repository is the standard location where default variables, including the specific versions for Kubernetes (k8sversion) and containerd (containerdversion), are defined. An engineer must modify or verify the values in this file to ensure the correct package versions are used during the image build.

A. config/pulumi/vars/pulumi.kib.config: This path relates to Pulumi, an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool. While used by NKP, it is not the tool responsible for defining package versions inside the OS image.

B. terraform/vars/default/terraform.tfvars: This file contains variables for Terraform, which provisions the infrastructure (VMs, networks). It does not control the software versions installed within the OS image.

D. The custom image's .env file: A .env file is not a standard part of the NKP image build process for defining component versions. These versions are build-time parameters, not runtime environment variables in this context.

1. Nutanix Kubernetes Platform Administration Guide: The section "Creating a Custom OS Image for NKP Clusters" describes the process of using the nutanix-kps-image-builder repository

which contains the Packer and Ansible scripts.

URL: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Nutanix-Kubernetes-Platform-Admin-Guide:aks-kps-image-create-custom-t.html

2. Nutanix Kubernetes Platform Image Builder Repository: The file structure of the official repository shows the ansible/groupvars/all/defaults.yaml file containing the version variables.

URL: https://github.com/nutanix/nutanix-kps-image-builder/blob/main/ansible/groupvars/all/defaults.yaml

Specifics: This file explicitly lists variables such as k8sversion and containerdversion.