vmware_rest_provision_lab

This role helps you to provision a lab environment consisting of one or more virtual machines to a VMware vSphere Cluster (vSphere 7.0.2 or greater).

I wrote this role with the following use case in mind.

For different scenarios I need lab environments based on Fedora, CentOS or RHEL operating systems (OS). These scenarios are sometimes recurring, so I'd like to deploy the same lab infrustructe again at a future point in time, with the same count of VMs but with a fresh OS installation.

I use variable files to specify the virtual machines (VM) for my labs and include them in this role as needed to provision a defined lab environment. This role focuses on creating the VMs.

For the guest OS installation I use ISO images with a kickstart file included. When a provisioned VM is powered on with the ISO image mounted, the kickstart installation starts the unattended installation process. At the end of the process I have network connected VMs. From here on I could run additional roles or playbooks to configure the guest OS the way I need them for different scenarios.

Disclamer: The intended of this role is to create lab environments not production stable ones. You use this role at your owen risk. Please keep that in mind.

Requirements and Dependencies

This role requires/depends on:

The vmware.vmware_rest collection
Python 3.6 or greater
aiohttp

Install the dependencies ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You can either install aiohttp using your OS package manager or using Python virtual environment.

Notes: For RHEL, there is no python3-aiohttp package available (yet), you can either get it from EPEL or install aiohttp using pip.

Installing the Collection from Ansible Galaxy ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Before using this role, you need to install the required collection with the ansible-galaxy CLI:

ansible-galaxy collection install vmware.vmware_rest

You can also include it in a requirements.yml file and install it via ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml using the format:

collections:
- name: vmware.vmware_rest

Role Variables

All input variables are specified in defaults/main.yml. You have to define these variables with values that are valid for your environment. Following you will find all the varialbes from defaults/main.yml with the short explanation.

Required information about the vSphere environment ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

vmware_rest_provision_lab_vc: FQDN of the vCenter instance. vmware_rest_provision_lab_dc: Name of the virtual Datacenter. vmware_rest_provision_lab_cluster: Name of the vSphere Cluster. vmware_rest_provision_lab_user: Username to connect to REST API; It's recommended to put this into a vault file. vmware_rest_provision_lab_pass: Password to authenticate at REST API, It's recommended to put this into a vault file. vmware_rest_provision_lab_validate_certs: true Boolean (true/false); whether to validate TLS certs or not; defaults to true. vmware_rest_provision_lab_datastore: The name of datastore to create the VM in. vmware_rest_provision_lab_network: The network name the VM should connect to.

ISO image to use for guest OS installation ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

vmware_rest_provision_lab_iso_path: Specifies the path to the ISO image to use. Take the path of the ISO image from vSphere Client. It's usually something like '[DatastoreName] /image.iso' or '[DatastoreName] MyFolder/image.iso'.

VMs are defined as dicts ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

These should be defined in variable files, e.g. vars/rhel_lab.yml or in your playbook.

Example dictionary:

vmware_rest_provision_lab_guests:
  VM_NAME_1:
    guest_OS: RHEL_8_64 # See vmware.vmware_rest.vcenter_vm for possible values.
    hardware_version: VMX_19 # See https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1003746
    hot_add_enabled: true
    size_MiB: 2048
    disk_size: 100000000 # Size in Bytes
    cpu_count: 1
    storage_policy:
      policy: UUID # The UUID of the storage policy to use
  VM_NAME_2:
    guest_OS: RHEL_8_64 # See vmware.vmware_rest.vcenter_vm for possible values.
    hardware_version: VMX_19 # See https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1003746
    hot_add_enabled: true
    size_MiB: 2048
    disk_size: 100000000 # Size in Bytes
    cpu_count: 1
    storage_policy:
      policy: UUID # The UUID of the storage policy to use

Example Playbook

The most simple version is to run:

- hosts: localhost
  roles:
     - vmware_rest_provision_lab

A playbook containing necessary vars could look like:

---
- hosts: localhost
  vars_files:
    - my.vault
  vars:
    vmware_rest_provision_lab_iso_path: >
      [vsanDatastore] MyFolder/rhel-8.7-x86_64-kickstart-dvd.iso
    vmware_rest_provision_lab_guests:
      test_vm1:
        guest_OS: RHEL_8_64
        hardware_version: VMX_19 # See https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1003746
        hot_add_enabled: true
        size_MiB: 2048
        disk_size: 100000 # Size in Bytes
        cpu_count: 1
        storage_policy:
          policy: UUID # The UUID of the storage policy to use
      test_vm2:
        guest_OS: RHEL_8_64
        hardware_version: VMX_19 # See https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1003746
        hot_add_enabled: true
        size_MiB: 2048
        disk_size: 100000 # Size in Bytes
        cpu_count: 1
        storage_policy:
          policy: UUID # The UUID of the storage policy to use
  roles:
    - vmware_rest_provision_lab

This playbook would provision two VMs test_vm1 and test_vm2. Some of the variables needed are defined in the encrypted file my.vault.

Contribution and Feedback

Open Source lives on participation. In case you find any bug, error or other issue while using this role, please raise an issue and address it. You have a fix for it too? Then I'm looking forward to receiving your pull request.

In case you just wanna ask a question, please raise in issue for it as well and we could discuss it there.

License

BSD

Author Information

Author: Joerg Kastning

Tronde / ansible_role_vmware_rest_provision_lab