Category: vmware

How to integrate VROPS with Ansible

Automating VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) with Ansible

In the world of IT operations, automation is the key to efficiency and consistency. VMware’s vRealize Operations (vROps) provides powerful monitoring and management capabilities for virtualized environments. Integrating vROps with Ansible, an open-source automation tool, can take your infrastructure management to the next level. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to achieve this integration and demonstrate its benefits with a practical example.

What is vRealize Operations (vROps)?

vRealize Operations (vROps) is a comprehensive monitoring and analytics solution from VMware. It helps IT administrators manage the performance, capacity, and overall health of their virtual environments. Key features of vROps include:

 Performance Monitoring: Continuous tracking of VMs, hosts, and other resources.
 Capacity Management: Planning and optimizing resource usage.
 Troubleshooting: Identifying and resolving issues promptly.
 Automated Actions: Responding to specific events with predefined actions.

Why Integrate vROps with Ansible?

Integrating vROps with Ansible allows you to automate routine tasks, enforce consistent configurations, and rapidly respond to changes or issues in your virtual environment. This integration enables you to:

 Automate Monitoring Setup: Configure monitoring for new virtual machines or environments automatically.
 Trigger Remediation Actions: Automate responses to alerts generated by vROps.
 Generate Reports: Automate the creation and distribution of performance and capacity reports.
 Maintain Configuration Compliance: Ensure consistent vROps configurations across environments.

Setting Up the Integration

Prerequisites

Before you start, ensure you have:

1.vROps Environment: A running instance of VMware vRealize Operations.
2.Ansible Installed: Ansible should be installed on your control node.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Configure API Access in vROps

First, ensure you have the necessary API access in vROps. You’ll need:

 vROps Host: The URL of your vROps instance.
 vROps Username: A user with API access permissions.
 vROps Password: The password for the above user.

Step 2: Install Ansible

If you haven’t installed Ansible yet, you can do so by following these commands:

sh

sudo apt update

sudo apt install ansible

Step 3: Create an Ansible Playbook

Create an Ansible playbook to interact with vROps. Below is an example playbook that retrieves the status of vROps resources.

Note: to use the other api end points you will need to acquire the token and set it as a fact to pass later.

Example

If you want to acquire the auth token:

.

name: Authenticate with vROps and Check vROps Status

  hosts: localhost

  vars:

    vrops_host: “your-vrops-host”

    vrops_username: “your-username”

    vrops_password: “your-password”

  tasks:

    – name: Authenticate with vROps

      uri:

        url: “https://{{ vrops_host }}/suite-api/api/auth/token/acquire”

        method: POST

        body_format: json

        body:

          username: {{ vrops_username }}”

          password: {{ vrops_password }}”

        headers:

          Content-Type: “application/json

        validate_certs: no

      register: auth_response

.

    – name: Fail if authentication failed

      fail:

        msg: “Authentication with vROps failed: {{ auth_response.json }}”

      when: auth_response.status != 200

.

    – name: Set auth token as fact

      set_fact:

        auth_token: {{ auth_response.json.token }}”

.

    – name: Get vROps status

      uri:

        url: “https://{{ vrops_host }}/suite-api/api/resources”

        method: GET

        headers:

          Authorization: vRealizeOpsToken {{ auth_token }}”

          Content-Type: “application/json

        validate_certs: no

      register: vrops_response

.

    – name: Display vROps status

      debug:

        msg: vROps response: {{ vrops_response.json }}”

.

Save this playbook to a file, for example, check_vrops_status.yml.

Step 4: Define Variables

Create a variables file to store your vROps credentials and host information.
Save it as vars.yml:

vrops_host: your-vrops-host

vrops_username: your-username

vrops_password: your-password

Step 5: Run the Playbook

Execute the playbook using the following command:

sh

ansible-playbook -e @vars.yml check_vrops_status.yml

This above command runs the playbook and retrieves the status of vROps resources, displaying the results if you used the first example.

Here are some of the key API functions you can use:

The Authentication to use the endpoints listed below, you will need to acquire the auth token and set it as a fact to pass to other tasks inside ansible to use with the various endpoints below.

 Login: Authenticate and get a session token.
 Endpoint: POST /suite-api/api/auth/token/acquire

Resource Management

 Get Resources: Retrieve a list of resources managed by vROps.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/resources
 Get Resource by ID: Retrieve details of a specific resource.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/resources/{resourceId}
 Create Resource: Add a new resource to vROps.
 Endpoint: POST /suite-api/api/resources
 Update Resource: Update information for an existing resource.
 Endpoint: PUT /suite-api/api/resources/{resourceId}
 Delete Resource: Remove a resource from vROps.
 Endpoint: DELETE /suite-api/api/resources/{resourceId}

Metrics and Data

 Get Metrics for a Resource: Retrieve metrics for a specific resource.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/resources/{resourceId}/stats
 Get Metric Definitions: List available metrics for a resource kind.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/resources/kind/{resourceKindKey}/statkeys
 Get Historical Metrics: Retrieve historical metric data for a resource.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/resources/{resourceId}/stats/historical

Alerts and Notifications

 Get Alerts: Retrieve a list of alerts.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/alerts
 Get Alert by ID: Retrieve details of a specific alert.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/alerts/{alertId}
 Acknowledge Alert: Acknowledge a specific alert.
 Endpoint: POST /suite-api/api/alerts/{alertId}/acknowledge
 Cancel Alert: Cancel a specific alert.
 Endpoint: POST /suite-api/api/alerts/{alertId}/cancel
 Generate Notifications: Send notifications based on specific conditions.
 Endpoint: POST /suite-api/api/notifications

Policies and Configurations

 Get Policies: Retrieve a list of policies.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/policies
 Get Policy by ID: Retrieve details of a specific policy.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/policies/{policyId}
 Create Policy: Add a new policy.
 Endpoint: POST /suite-api/api/policies
 Update Policy: Update an existing policy.
 Endpoint: PUT /suite-api/api/policies/{policyId}
 Delete Policy: Remove a policy.
 Endpoint: DELETE /suite-api/api/policies/{policyId}

Dashboards and Reports

 Get Dashboards: Retrieve a list of dashboards.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/dashboards
 Get Dashboard by ID: Retrieve details of a specific dashboard.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/dashboards/{dashboardId}
 Create Dashboard: Add a new dashboard.
 Endpoint: POST /suite-api/api/dashboards
 Update Dashboard: Update an existing dashboard.
 Endpoint: PUT /suite-api/api/dashboards/{dashboardId}
 Delete Dashboard: Remove a dashboard.
 Endpoint: DELETE /suite-api/api/dashboards/{dashboardId}
 Get Reports: Retrieve a list of reports.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/reports
 Generate Report: Generate a new report based on a template.
 Endpoint: POST /suite-api/api/reports/{reportTemplateId}/generate
 Get Report by ID: Retrieve details of a specific report.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/reports/{reportId}

Capacity and Utilization

 Get Capacity Remaining: Retrieve remaining capacity for a specific resource.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/resources/{resourceId}/capacity/remaining
 Get Capacity Usage: Retrieve capacity usage for a specific resource.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/resources/{resourceId}/capacity/usage

Additional Functionalities

 Get Custom Groups: Retrieve a list of custom groups.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/groups
 Create Custom Group: Add a new custom group.
 Endpoint: POST /suite-api/api/groups
 Update Custom Group: Update an existing custom group.
 Endpoint: PUT /suite-api/api/groups/{groupId}
 Delete Custom Group: Remove a custom group.
 Endpoint: DELETE /suite-api/api/groups/{groupId}
 Get Recommendations: Retrieve a list of recommendations.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/recommendations
 Get Recommendation by ID: Retrieve details of a specific recommendation.
 Endpoint: GET /suite-api/api/recommendations/{recommendationId}

These are just a few examples of the many functions available through the vROps REST API.

.

.

How to add VM-Tags and Custom attributes with Anisble(VMware)

So whether your using cloud or doing in house deploys. Tagging is a used a lot especially in cloud type environments. Which we will cover in later posts.

So a common reason to tag your vm is wanting to have the creation date and the type of server or environment its using, handy for backup solutions & other auditables.

.

Pre-requisites: Assumed.

 Ansible 2.9 installed and configured –
 Vmware Community modules configured
 Vmware group variables previously defined for vmware deployments(Is helpful)

.

Step by Step:

1.Create a roles directory inside /etc/ansible/roles

a.mkdir -p /etc/ansible/roles/custom-tags-attributes-vmware/tasks

b.mkdir -p /etc/ansible/roles/ custom-tags-attributes-vmware/defaults

 

2.Now you want to create a task for the snapshots.

c.Inside /etc/ansible/roles/custom-tags-attributes-vmware/tasks/

d.Create a file called main.yml

 

3.Add the following code and save the file 

Note: Okay for the custom attributes to work you need to get the MOID, UUID & Folder of the vm by using the vm name. So we need to gather facts about the vm and the set those facts as variables that we can pass to the next tasks.

 

– name: get list of facts

  vmware_guest_facts:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

    datacenter: “{{ vcenter_dc }}”

    validate_certs: False

  delegate_to: localhost

  ignore_errors: true

register: vm_facts

 

Note: So when we use the vmware_guest_facts module to gather the facts about the vm by register the facts to a variable “vm_facts, which when you run the playbook with –vvvv will spit out the facst you can pass as indicated below..

      hw_folder“: “/SysUnix/Testing“,

hw_guest_full_name“: “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (64-bit)”,

hw_guest_ha_state“: true,

hw_guest_id“: “rhel7_64Guest”,

hw_interfaces“: [

“eth0”

],

hw_is_template“: false,

hw_memtotal_mb“: 2048,

hw_name“: “v-sits-test4”,

hw_power_status“: “poweredOn“,

hw_processor_count“: 2,

hw_product_uuid“: “4226d4e1-6be8-9447-5ced-b037075e2ffd”,

hw_version“: “vmx-11”,

instance_uuid“: “50263518-c95b-c3be-5c77-4e1ea69ec295”,

“ipv4”: “192.168.1.29“,

“ipv6”: null,

module_hw“: true,

        moid“: “vm-296678”,

“snapshots”: [],

vimref“: “vim.VirtualMachine:vm-296678”,

vnc“: {}

.

.Note: Now that we have the UUID, MOID, & Folder. We now want to create static variables for UUID, MOID, & folder by using the previous variable we registered as “vm_facts”, and we want to set them as static variables by setting them as facts we can past to the tasks after. As indicated below. Again setting facts is the same as defining variables in bash. Just ansible way to do it.

 

– set_fact:

    vm_uuid: “{{ vm_facts.instance.instance_uuid }}”

– set_fact:

    moid: “{{ vm_facts.instance.moid }}”

– set_fact:

    vm_folder: “{{ vm_facts.instance.hw_folder }}”

 

Note: Now want to use the ansible server date and pass that as a variable so you don’t have to input the date as manual value each time you deploy a new host. So we want to grab the date and setup a static fact and then pass it as its own variable. Like we did above…

– name: Get Date

shell: date +%Y-%m-%d

register: date

  delegate_to: localhost

 

Note: We use shell module to get the date in the format we want, then register the result as the variable {{ date }}. We then set a static fact of the result and create another variable called date with using the result from the above.

– set_fact:

    date: “{{ date.stdout }}”

 

Note: We now want to pass all the fact to the “vmware_guest_custom_attributesmodule UUID, MOID, DATE, and Folder indicated as below.

– name: Add multiple virtual machine custom attributes

  vmware_guest_custom_attributes:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

    datacenter: “{{ vcenter_dc }}”

    folder: “{{ vm_folder }}”

    uuid: “{{ vm_facts.instance.instance_uuid }}”

    moid: “{{ vm_facts.instance.moid }}”

state: present

    validate_certs: False

    use_instance_uuid: True

attributes:

– name: Creation Date

value: “{{ date }}”   

# – name: MyAttribute2 – Note: You can add additional attributes if you wish

# value: test2 – Note: You can add additional attributes if you wish

  delegate_to: localhost

register: attributes

 

Note: Okay so depending on which module you use, some require you to gather facts about the vmware categories. This is just incase you need the cateogory_id which is usually derived from using a REST API in json or other method. The “community.vmware.vmware_category_factswill be able to pull the info and then you can pass it as a variable or a static value. IF YOU NEED, however this is NOT needed. If you use the vmware_tag_manager” module”

 

– name: Gather facts about tag categories

  community.vmware.vmware_category_facts:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

    validate_certs: no

  delegate_to: localhost

register: all_tag_category_facts

.

ok: [v-sits-test4] => {

“changed”: false,

“invocation”: {

module_args“: {

“hostname”: “vmware.nicktailor.com“,

“password”: “VALUE_SPECIFIED_IN_NO_LOG_PARAMETER”,

“port”: 443,

“protocol”: “https”,

“username”: “admin“,

validate_certs“: false

}

},

tag_category_facts“: [

{

category_associable_types“: [

VirtualMachine

],

category_cardinality“: “SINGLE”,

category_description“: “VM Type – Clone, Decomm, Dev, Prod, SRM, SLM, Template or Test”,

category_id“: “urn:vmomi:InventoryServiceCategory:f1024eb4-d7d4-49fe-9725-4dcba39fbe3b:GLOBAL”,

category_name“: “VMType“,

category_used_by“: []

},

{

category_associable_types“: [

VirtualMachine

],

category_cardinality“: “SINGLE”,

category_description“: “Team or Department”,

category_id“: “urn:vmomi:InventoryServiceCategory:888a0877-5335-4477-9347-6d8de5b3e60e:GLOBAL”,

category_name“: “Team/Dept”,

category_used_by“: []

}

]

}

.

.

Note: Now that we want to create the tag for the vm using the “vmware_tag_managermodule. The only variable that is passed from outside the defaults at the inventory_hostname level “host_var/nicktest1” is the {{ vm_tag }} Make sure you have this defined for the role to work properly.

 

– name: Add tags to a virtual machine

  vmware_tag_manager:

hostname: ‘{{ vcenter_host }}’

username: ‘{{ vcenter_username }}’

password: ‘{{ vcenter_password }}’

    validate_certs: no

    tag_names:

      – “{{ vm_tag }}” – passed at the host_var/nicktest1

    object_name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

    object_type: VirtualMachine

state: present

  delegate_to: localhost

 

4.Save the file
5.You can either have group_vars set up for individual datacenters, but for now just define the variables under /etc/ansible/roles/custom-tags-attributes-vmware/defaults

.

Note: You will likely have a group_var from you vmdeploy role that you can use for here.

.

e.Create a file called main.yml and the following variables

vcenter_username: admin

vcenter_password: should be vault encrypted variable

vcenter_host: vmware.nicktailor.com

vcenter_dc: London

.

.

f.Save the file

.

 Note: Ensure your host “nicktest1” is listed in your inventory host file.
/etc/ansible/inventory/TEST/hosts
 Note: Make sure your “host_var/nicktest1″ has the “vm_tag: {{ value }}” defined

 

Run your playbook: from /etc/ansible

.

1.ansible-playbook –i inventory/TEST/hosts justremovevmsnap.yml –ask-vault-pass –limit=’nicktest1′

.

Playbook log:

.

[root@ansible-server]# ansible-playbook –i inventory/TEST/hosts justcustomattrib.yml –ask-vault-pass –limit=’v-sits-test4′

Vault password:

.

PLAY [all] **********************************************************************************************************************************

.

TASK [custom-tags-attributes-vmware : get list of facts] ************************************************************************************

[DEPRECATION WARNING]: The ‘vmware_guest_facts‘ module has been renamed to ‘vmware_guest_info‘. This feature will be removed in version

2.13. Deprecation warnings can be disabled by setting deprecation_warnings=False in ansible.cfg.

ok: [v-sits-test4]

.

TASK [custom-tags-attributes-vmware : set_fact] *********************************************************************************************

ok: [v-sits-test4]

.

TASK [custom-tags-attributes-vmware : set_fact] *********************************************************************************************

ok: [v-sits-test4]

.

TASK [custom-tags-attributes-vmware : set_fact] *********************************************************************************************

ok: [v-sits-test4]

.

TASK [custom-tags-attributes-vmware : Get Date] *********************************************************************************************

changed: [v-sits-test4]

.

TASK [custom-tags-attributes-vmware : set_fact] *********************************************************************************************

ok: [v-sits-test4]

.

TASK [custom-tags-attributes-vmware : Add multiple virtual machine custom attributes] *******************************************************

ok: [v-sits-test4]

.

TASK [custom-tags-attributes-vmware : Gather facts about tag categories] ********************************************************************

ok: [v-sits-test4]

.

TASK [custom-tags-attributes-vmware : Add tags to a virtual machine] ************************************************************************

ok: [v-sits-test4]

.

PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************************************************************************

v-sits-test4 : ok=9 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0

.

How to remove snapshots with Ansible(VMware)

Okay, so lots of folks ask me about this, and there are a number of ways you can do this. 

But if you’re using vmware and redhat satellite for central patch management for your redhat environment.

Then depending on how you patch your systems. If you snapshot every group prior to patching. Then this post will be perfect for you.

Process:

1.Remove snapshot once patching is all done and servers are confirmed OKAY

Pre-requisites: Assumed.

 Ansible 2.9 installed and configured –
 Vmware Community modules configured
 Vmware group variables previously defined for vmware deployments(Is helpful)
 Vmware user/password configure with being able to remove snaphots in either datacenters you have

Step by Step:

1.Create a roles directory inside /etc/ansible/roles

 

a.mkdir -p /etc/ansible/roles/remove-snapshot/tasks

b.mkdir -p /etc/ansible/roles/remove-snapshot/defaults

 

2.Now you want to create a task for the snapshots.

 

c.Inside /etc/ansible/roles/remove-snapshot/tasks/

d.Create a file called main.yml

 

3.Add the following code and save the file

– name: Login into vCenter and get cookies

  delegate_to: localhost

  uri:

url: https://{{ vcenter_host }}/rest/com/vmware/cis/session

    force_basic_auth: yes

    validate_certs: no

method: POST

user: ‘{{ vcenter_username }}’

password: ‘{{ vcenter_password }}’

register: login

 

Note: Okay so what we want to do is find the virtual machine in vsphere by name and then grab its folder value and pass it as a variable so you don’t need to define it statically in your host_var. The main reason is, say you deployed a vm and months later moved it to another folder, your code will likely have the origin folder which would be annoying, and the ansible documentation doesn’t really cover this approach, you basically figure it out as you do it. So im going to save you all time. Here is how you do it. The below will gather vm_facts based on the inventory_hostname

– name: Find Guest’s Folder using name

  vmware_guest_find:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

     validate_certs: no

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

  delegate_to: localhost

  ignore_errors: true

register: vm_facts

Note: It will than gather those facts and find the folder value. You then register the facts to a variable “vm_facts” Now it will spit out what it finds when you do –vvvv when you do your play. From there you can see the folder setting. You now want to set that that folder setting as its own variable that you can pass to another task as indicated below.

.

ok: [ansible-server] => {

“changed”: false,

    “folders”: [

“/SysUnix/Teststuff

],

“invocation”: {

module_args“: {

datacenter“: null,

“hostname”: “vmware.nicktailor.com“,

“name”: ” ansible-server“,

“password”: “VALUE_SPECIFIED_IN_NO_LOG_PARAMETER”,

“port”: 443,

proxy_host“: null,

proxy_port“: null,

use_instance_uuid“: false,

“username”: “svc_ans“,

uuid“: null,

validate_certs“: false

}

}

}

– name: “vm_folder – setting folder value”

  set_fact:

    folder : “{{ vm_facts.folders }}”

 

Note: So you can see that the facts has a sub fact called “folders”. We want to pass that by setting that value as its own variable by making it a fact. Ansible way to set variables is setting facts. So we make that value above into a variable “vm_facts.folders” and then pass that into the next task where it asks for folders. This will get around the having to provide the exact folder the vm_resides to create snapshotting for an array of hosts. This section is basically identical to create except the “state” is set to absent

– name: Remove Snapshot

  vmware_guest_snapshot:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

     datacenter: “{{ vcenter_dc }}”

     validate_certs: no

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

     state: absent

     snapshot_name: “Ansible Managed Snapshot”

     folder: “‘{{ vm_facts.folders }}'”

description: “This snapshot is created by Ansible Playbook”

  delegate_to: localhost

.

4.Save the file

.

5.You can either have group_vars set up for individual datacenters, but for now just define the variables under /etc/ansible/roles/remove-snapshot/defaults

.

Note: You will likely have a group_var from you vmdeploy role that you can use for here.

.

e.Create a file called main.yml and the following variables

vcenter_username: admin

vcenter_password: should be vault encrypted variable

vcenter_host: vmware.nicktailor.com

vcenter_dc: London

.

.

f.Save the file

.

 Note: Ensure your host “nicktest1” is listed in your inventory host file.
/etc/ansible/inventory/TEST/hosts

Run your playbook: from /etc/ansible

.

1.ansible-playbook –i inventory/TEST/hosts justremovevmsnap.yml –ask-vault-pass –limit=’nicktest1

.

Playbook log:

.

[root@ansible-server]# ansible-playbook –i inventory/TEST/hosts justremovevmsnap.yml –ask-vault-pass –limit=’nicktest1

Vault password:

.

PLAY [all] **********************************************************************************************************************************

.

TASK [remove_snapshot : Login into vCenter and get cookies] *********************************************************************************

ok: [nicktest1]

.

TASK [remove_snapshot : Find Guest’s Folder using name] *************************************************************************************

ok: [nicktest1]

.

TASK [remove_snapshot : vm_folder – setting folder value] ***********************************************************************************

ok: [nicktest1]

.

TASK [remove_snapshot : remove Snapshot] ****************************************************************************************************

ok: [nicktest1]

.

PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************************************************************************

nicktest1 : ok=4 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0

.

2.Go log into vsphere and check to see the vm no longer has the snapshot name listed.

.

Note: This uses the snapshot name to remove as the one you used to create. If another snapshot exists with a different name it will ignore it entirely. If you pass snapshot variable with another name and run the book again, it will remove another snapshot. The same applies to removing snapshots, it will remove based on the name.

 

How to create snapshots with Ansible (VMware)

Okay, so lots of folks ask me about this, and there are a number of ways you can do this.

But if you’re using vmware and redhat satellite for central patch management for your redhat environment.

Then depending on how you patch your systems. If you snapshot every group prior to patching. Then this post will be perfect for you.

Patching Processes:

1.Snapshot every vm in your group using ansible
      2.   Update your host content-views in satellite and clear yum caches –
            – (these are not in this post) part 2
3.Patch all your servers using ansible – (these are not in this post) part 3
4..Reboot all your servers (these are not in this post) part 4
5..Test to ensure they all came back up (these not in this post for now) part 5

Note: There is a step to change the content view of all your hosts and cleaning your yum repos on all the hosts. I have not written a post on this step yet, but you should obviously automate that. I will eventually get around to including it, when I have some time.

Pre-requisites: Assumed.

 Ansible 2.9 installed and configured with python3
 VMware Community modules configured
 VMware group variables previously defined for VMware deployments(Is helpful)
 VMware user/password configure with being able to create snaphots in either datacenters you have

.

Step by Step:

1.Create a roles directory inside /etc/ansible/roles
a.mkdir -p /etc/ansible/roles/create-snapshot/tasks

b.mkdir -p /etc/ansible/roles/create-snapshot/defaults

 

2.Now you want to create a task for the snapshots.

 

c.Inside /etc/ansible/roles/create-snapshot/tasks/

d.Create a file called main.yml

 

3.Add the following code and save the file

 

– name: Login into vCenter and get cookies

  delegate_to: localhost

  uri:

url: https://{{ vcenter_host }}/rest/com/vmware/cis/session

    force_basic_auth: yes

    validate_certs: no

method: POST

user: ‘{{ vcenter_username }}’

password: ‘{{ vcenter_password }}’

register: login

 

Note: Okay so what we want to do is find the virtual machine in vsphere by name and then grab its folder value and pass it as a variable so you don’t need to define it statically in your host_var. The main reason is, say you deployed a vm and months later moved it to another folder, your code will likely have the origin folder which would be annoying, and the ansible documentation doesn’t really cover this approach, you basically figure it out as you do it. So im going to save you all time. Here is how you do it. The below will gather vm_facts based on the inventory_hostname

– name: Find Guest’s Folder using name

  vmware_guest_find:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

     validate_certs: no

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

  delegate_to: localhost

  ignore_errors: true

register: vm_facts

 

Note: It will than gather those facts and find the folder value. You then register the facts to a variable “vm_facts” Now it will spit out what it finds when you do –vvvv when you do your play. From there you can see the folder setting. You now want to set that that folder setting as its own variable that you can pass to another task as indicated below.

.

ok: [ansible-server] => {

“changed”: false,

    “folders”: [

“/SysUnix/Teststuff

],

“invocation”: {

module_args“: {

datacenter“: null,

“hostname”: “vmware.nicktailor.com“,

“name”: “ ansible-server“,

“password”: “VALUE_SPECIFIED_IN_NO_LOG_PARAMETER”,

“port”: 443,

proxy_host“: null,

proxy_port“: null,

use_instance_uuid“: false,

“username”: “admin“,

uuid“: null,

validate_certs“: false

}

}

}

 

– name: “vm_folder – setting folder value”

  set_fact:

    folder : “{{ vm_facts.folders }}”

 

Note: So you can see that the facts has a sub fact called “folders”. We want to pass that by setting that value as its own variable by making it a fact. Ansible way to set variables is setting facts. So we make that value above into a variable “vm_facts.folders” and then pass that into the next task where it asks for folders. This will get around the having to provide the exact folder the vm_resides to create snapshotting for an array of hosts.

– name: Create Snapshot

  vmware_guest_snapshot:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

     datacenter: “{{ vcenter_dc }}”

     validate_certs: no

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

state: present

     snapshot_name: “Ansible Managed Snapshot”

     folder: “‘{{ vm_facts.folders }}'”

description: “This snapshot is created by Ansible Playbook”

  delegate_to: localhost

.

4.Save the file

.

5.You can either have group_vars set up for individual datacenters, but for now just define the variables under /etc/ansible/roles/create-snapshot/defaults

.

Note: You will likely have a group_var from you vmdeploy role that you can use for here.

.

e.Create a file called main.yml and the following variables

vcenter_username: admin

vcenter_password: should be vault encrypted variable

vcenter_host: vmware.nicktailor.com

vcenter_dc: London

.

.

f.Save the file

.

 Note: Ensure your host “nicktest1” is listed in your inventory host file.
/etc/ansible/inventory/TEST/hosts

Run your playbook: from /etc/ansible

.

1.ansible-playbook –i inventory/TEST/hosts justcreatevmsnap.yml –ask-vault-pass –limit=’nicktest1

.

Playbook log:

.

[root@ansibleserver]# ansible-playbook –i inventory/TEST/hosts justcreatevmsnap.yml –ask-vault-pass –limit=’nicktest1

Vault password:

.

PLAY [all] **********************************************************************************************************************************

.

TASK [create_snapshot : Login into vCenter and get cookies] *********************************************************************************

ok: [nicktest1]

.

TASK [create_snapshot : Find Guest’s Folder using name] *************************************************************************************

ok: [nicktest1]

.

TASK [create_snapshot : vm_folder – setting folder value] ***********************************************************************************

ok: [nicktest1]

.

TASK [create_snapshot : Create Snapshot] ****************************************************************************************************

ok: [nicktest1]

.

PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************************************************************************

nicktest1            : ok=4 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0

 

2.Go log into vsphere and check to see the vm has a snapshot name “ansible created snapshot” if it does it worked.

.

Note: This uses the snapshot name to create. If another snapshot exists with a different name it will ignore it entirely. If you pass snapshot variable with another name and run the book again, it will create another snapshot. The same applies to removing snapshots, it will remove based on the name. We will cover that in my post to remove snapshots.

 

How to deploy Vmware VM’s using Ansible from Cloned Templates

QUICK OVERVIEW OF WHAT ANSIBLE IS..

Ansible is a radically simple IT automation engine that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, and many other IT needs.

Designed for multi-tier deployments since day one, Ansible models your IT infrastructure by describing how all of your systems inter-relate, rather than just managing one system at a time.

It uses no agents and no additional custom security infrastructure, so it’s easy to deploy – and most importantly, it uses a very simple language (YAML, in the form of Ansible Playbooks) that allow you to describe your automation jobs in a way that approaches plain English.

On this page, we’ll give you a really quick overview so you can see things in context. For more detail, hop over to docs.ansible.com.

EFFICIENT ARCHITECTURE

Ansible works by connecting to your nodes and pushing out small programs, called “Ansible modules” to them. These programs are written to be resource models of the desired state of the system. Ansible then executes these modules (over SSH by default), and removes them when finished.

Your library of modules can reside on any machine, and there are no servers, daemons, or databases required. Typically you’ll work with your favorite terminal program, a text editor, and probably a version control system to keep track of changes to your content.

 Okay so what that actually is saying is. Ansible has a whole library of python modules that come out of the box coupled with a huge community of open source python modules to do all sorts of tasks to automate infrastructure.
 You can call these modules by writing yaml code, inside your yaml code when you call a specific module, you can the pass specific variables to that module to do specific things defined by the python module.
Example power on and off a vm, or connect or disconnect network, etc.

For the purposes of this post we are are going to dive into using vmware_guest” module by way of using http api authentication session & cookies. There are many other python modules which you can search in the ansible documentation and or ansible-galaxy

.

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/vmware/index.html

Now it definitely helps to be able to code in python or at least be able to read python code, however completely not necessary. Anyone with basic understanding of bash scripting can learn ansible. I could teach a newbie ansible in a couple days. Sharing is caring.

.

Anyone who says otherwise……don’t hire them.

.

.

Ansible Setup: 

 Now this post assumes you already have ansible setup and are running a newer version. If not you will need to review post on how to setup ansible before you can proceed with this.

Pre-Module install Steps: 

Requirements

The below requirements are needed on the host that executes this module.

 python >= 2.6
 PyVmomi
 PIP
 Community.vmware library of python modules

.

1.Okay so you if your on our ansible machine as root
 Run the following this should install the modules you need
ansible-galaxy collection install community.vmware
 Note: Depending on where you ran this from. If you ran this from /home/root. You can find all your python modules in ‘root/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/community/vmware/plugins/modules’
 You will probably need to install python 2.6 or greater
Redhat : Yum install python (should get you the latest version)
 Okay you may also neeed to install pip

Note: Now on centos its not available out of the box

.Centos 7 PIP install:

1.sudo yum install epel-release
2.sudo yum install python-pip
3.pip –version (verify its installed)
4.sudo yum install python-devel (these are for building python modules)
5.sudo yum groupinstall ‘development tools’ (these are for building python modules(

.

.Install PyVmomi: 

1.pip install –upgrade pyvmomi

.

It will look like…..

[root@nick roles]# pip install –upgrade pyvmomi

Collecting pyvmomi

Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/ba/69/4e8bfd6b0aae49382e1ab9e3ce7de9ea6318eac007b3076e6006dbe5a7cd/pyvmomi-7.0.1.tar.gz (584kB)

100% |████████████████████████████████| 593kB 861kB/s

Cache entry deserialization failed, entry ignored

Collecting requests>=2.3.0 (from pyvmomi)

Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/29/c1/24814557f1d22c56d50280771a17307e6bf87b70727d975fd6b2ce6b014a/requests-2.25.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (61kB)

100% |████████████████████████████████| 61kB 3.5MB/s

Collecting six>=1.7.3 (from pyvmomi)

Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/ee/ff/48bde5c0f013094d729fe4b0316ba2a24774b3ff1c52d924a8a4cb04078a/six-1.15.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl

Cache entry deserialization failed, entry ignored

Collecting certifi>=2017.4.17 (from requests>=2.3.0->pyvmomi)

Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/5e/a0/5f06e1e1d463903cf0c0eebeb751791119ed7a4b3737fdc9a77f1cdfb51f/certifi-2020.12.5-py2.py3-none-any.whl (147kB)

100% |████████████████████████████████| 153kB 6.5MB/s

Cache entry deserialization failed, entry ignored

Collecting urllib3<1.27,>=1.21.1 (from requests>=2.3.0->pyvmomi)

Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/f5/71/45d36a8df68f3ebb098d6861b2c017f3d094538c0fb98fa61d4dc43e69b9/urllib3-1.26.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (136kB)

100% |████████████████████████████████| 143kB 6.9MB/s

Cache entry deserialization failed, entry ignored

Collecting idna<3,>=2.5 (from requests>=2.3.0->pyvmomi)

Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/a2/38/928ddce2273eaa564f6f50de919327bf3a00f091b5baba8dfa9460f3a8a8/idna-2.10-py2.py3-none-any.whl (58kB)

100% |████████████████████████████████| 61kB 4.4MB/s

Cache entry deserialization failed, entry ignored

Collecting chardet<5,>=3.0.2 (from requests>=2.3.0->pyvmomi)

Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/19/c7/fa589626997dd07bd87d9269342ccb74b1720384a4d739a1872bd84fbe68/chardet-4.0.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (178kB)

100% |████████████████████████████████| 184kB 3.5MB/s

Installing collected packages: certifi, urllib3, idna, chardet, requests, six, pyvmomi

Found existing installation: certifi 2018.4.16

Uninstalling certifi-2018.4.16:

Successfully uninstalled certifi-2018.4.16

Found existing installation: urllib3 1.22

Uninstalling urllib3-1.22:

Successfully uninstalled urllib3-1.22

Found existing installation: idna 2.6

Uninstalling idna-2.6:

Successfully uninstalled idna-2.6

Found existing installation: chardet 3.0.4

Uninstalling chardet-3.0.4:

Successfully uninstalled chardet-3.0.4

Found existing installation: requests 2.18.4

Uninstalling requests-2.18.4:

Successfully uninstalled requests-2.18.4

Found existing installation: six 1.9.0

Uninstalling six-1.9.0:

Successfully uninstalled six-1.9.0

Running setup.py install for pyvmomi … done

Successfully installed certifi-2020.12.5 chardet-4.0.0 idna-2.10 pyvmomi-7.0.1 requests-2.25.1 six-1.15.0 urllib3-1.26.2

You are using pip version 10.0.1, however version 20.3.3 is available.

.

You should consider upgrading via the ‘pip install –upgrade pip’ command.

(You noticed this at the bottom)

A lot of the time you need to upgrade pip for the modules to install as python is always evolving at a fast pace

.

So run

.

2.pip install –upgrade pip

.

[root@nick roles]# pip install –upgrade pip

Collecting pip

Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/54/eb/4a3642e971f404d69d4f6fa3885559d67562801b99d7592487f1ecc4e017/pip-20.3.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.5MB)

100% |████████████████████████████████| 1.5MB 799kB/s

Installing collected packages: pip

Found existing installation: pip 8.1.2

Uninstalling pip-8.1.2:

Successfully uninstalled pip-8.1.2

Successfully installed pip-10.0.1

.

You get the idea……

.

.VpsherePre-requistes for this to work:

.

You will need a vmware user who has api access permission for the following items. If the user you have setup in vcenter is unable to see these items. This module will fail. You do not need a user with full admin privileges, which is what a lot of documentation says online cryptically. I have tested this and confirmed that is not the case. Obivously, its way better to just give admin privileges to the user and trust the people you hire and use ansible vault to hide the credentials. Which we will get into later….

.

You can also check these parameters in your code by validating using assertions to see if they are all working with your user prior to moving on the next task.

.

– vSphere API configuration

– VM details

vcenter_host

– cluster

datacenter

– folder

vm_disk_size

vm_cpu_count

vm_memory

vm_vlan

vm_vlan_name

vm_dvswitch

vm_datatstore

vmware tools and or open_vm_tools must installed the clone template (super important)

.

.

Okay so now were on setting up the vmware_guest module using yaml code.

.

Setting vmware_guest module on ansible:

.

Now what I like to do is set everything up as a role in ansible to call in your playbooks, it keeps things cleaner and its much easier to find spacing mistakes in your code when writing in yaml. Lots of NBTo aid in checking for mistakes. But ultimately its experience. I’m a bit of both but I tend just pop a vi open and just write and much in there

.

1.Inside your /etc/ansible
 Create a directory called roles
mkdir roles
3.Next you want to move inside the that directory and create a name directory for this role and then go inside that directory
i.cd roles
ii.mkdir ansible-vmware-deploy
iii.cd ansible-vmware-deploy
4.Next create the following direcorties inside ‘ansible-vmware-deploy’
iv.mkdir defaults
v.mkdir tasks
vi.mkdir meta (this is really only needed for when you’re setting repositories in bickbucket, git, etc)
5.move into the tasks directory
vii.cd tasks

Note: Now we do most of our work in this directory. Your primary yaml file is always called “main.yml” Your playbooks always look for this file when trying to call python modules.

.

6.Open your favorite editor vi, nano, joe, visual studio (whatever)
a.Call the file “main.yml
b.Inside the file…

.

Setting up the yaml:

.

1. First stage of the yaml is use the http login to the vcenter host and successfully authenticate and then grab those session cookies to carry out the next set of tasks which utilise the vmware_guest module.

– name: Login into vCenter and get cookies

  delegate_to: localhost

  uri:

url: https://{{ vcenter_host }}/rest/com/vmware/cis/session

    force_basic_auth: yes

    validate_certs: no

method: POST

user: ‘{{ vcenter_username }}’

password: ‘{{ vcenter_password }}’

register: login

.

.

2. Okay so this where we are now actually calling the vmware_guest module in yaml. You can see that the code has a lot of areas that are variablelised. These variable are passed in a couple of ways. You need to pass the defaults through the defaults directory we created earlier, and the second is host specific variables which will be under your host_vars directory under your inventory structure, which we will get into later.

 

Note: Now remember this is code to deploy from an existing cloned template you have sitting on datastore somewhere in your environment. The process to deploy a vm using kickstart using DHCP that’s bit different to setup I wrote this to help out those people who cant see the wisdom and efficiency of having DHCP’d deployments

You will be passing these variables

.

– name: Create a VM

  vmware_guest:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

    validate_certs: False

cluster: “{{ vcenter_cluster }}”

    datacenter: “{{ vcenter_dc }}”

 

Note: name: This will be the name of the new vm created. Keep in mind the vm host will also be setup with a shortname for the hostname of the server not the FQDN. You can probably fix this using vmshell or I used a completely separate role to setup the network for physical machines which uses jinja templates and inside the role I passed the new name as a variable. But that’s for another post

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

folder: “{{ vm_folder }}”

template: “{{ VMTemplate }}”

state: “{{ vm_state }}”

Note: guest_id: this is what kind of OS will the VM Run, almost every hypervisor asks that prior to creating a vm. You can find the list online.

    guest_id: “{{ vm_guest_id }}”

Note: disk: this section you could technically pass it through as a variable in your host_vars on the specific hosts, but since were using a template. I kept these parameters static here inside the role.

disk:

size_gb: 80

type: thin

datastore: “{{ vm_datastore }}”

size_gb: 100

type: thin

datastore: “{{ vm_datastore }}”

hardware:

      memory_mb: “{{ vm_memory }}”

      num_cpus: “{{ vm_cpu_count }}”

      scsi: paravirtual

 

Note: Customization: This section is very important because without it your dns in /etc/resolv.conf will not be configured correctly. A lot of people have a hell of time with this on the net, as the parsing of this in yaml is bit tricky, and people resort to using vm_guest_file to update the /etc/resolv.conf, which sucks because now you need the root/pass via ssh. My way will work


customization:

      dns_servers: “{{ vm_dns_servers }}”

      dns_suffix: “{{ vm_dns_suffix }}”


Note: networks: This section is the section which will use
vmware-tools or open_vm_tools to update the network config on host after powering on the vm, but before the OS is booted, provided you said to power it on in your host_var file. This section helps people get around the issue of having no DHCP and having to deploy each server using the same static address on a dedicated vlan. This section will go and update the vm network parameters and the template vm will deploy on a  whatever vlan, with different ip, gateway, netmask. It will also register a new mac address to the vm, so you don’t end up with vm’s with duplicate mac-addresses. Lastly, it will update /etc/hosts with the new ip and shortname of the server


networks:

– name: “{{ vm_vlan_name }}”

type: static

      dvswitch_name: “{{ vm_dvswitch }}”

      ip: “{{ vm_ip }}”

netmask: “{{ vm_netmask }}”

gateway: “{{ vm_gateway }}”

      start_connected: “{{ vm_connected }}”

# wait_for_ip_address: yes (this is if you are using DHCP)

  delegate_to: localhost

register: vm_deploy

.

Note: This section is just spits out verbose information on the how the build went and the mac-address of the vm. This hand to pay attention to so you can ensure your template mac and your new vm don’t have duplicate macs. If you do. You will need to go into vshere find the VM. Remove the network and readd it manually, to register a new mac

.

– debug:

var: vm_deploy.instance.hw_eth0.macaddress

.

– debug:

var: deploy_vm

.

– debug:

var: mac.

.

7.Okay so now we need to setup our defaults to pass the to role we just created.

.

 So go into your defaults directory for the role
cd /etc/ansible/roles/ansible-vmware-deploy/defaults
 Create another file called ‘main.yml
Vi main.yml and copy the contents below.

Not: Its easier to put all your defaults here and then comment out the ones you want to pass through your host_vars specific files after you got it working the way you want.

.

vm_disks: 100

vm_cpu_count: 2

vm_state: present

vm_memory: 2048

#vm_datastore: vmfs-datastore1234

vcenter_username: BruceWayne

vcenter_password: ( you will put ansible_vault encrypted variable here, for now just put in your password for testing)

vm_dvswitch: DvSwitch

vcenter_cluster: ProdCluster

vcenter_host: vcenter.nicktailor.com

vcenter_dc: London

#vm_folder: /Production/Unix/

#vm_vlan_name: VM76123

vm_guest_id: rhel7_64Guest

#VMTemplate: redhat-template2020

.

 Save the file defaults/main.yml

.

Ansible Hosts and Inventory:

.

Okay so this is where everyone handles things uniquely. I personally like to take the approach of creating inventory based on environment. Its logical and the best way to manage hosts in very large infrastructures.

.

So if you have DEV/STAGING/PRODUCTION as your environments. Then I would set it up as such

.

.

      1. Inside your /etc/ansible directory create the following

Mkdir -p /etc/ansible/inventory
Mkdir -p /etc/ansible/inventory/DEV
Mkdir -p /etc/ansible/inventory/STAGING
Mkdir -p /etc/ansible/inventory/PRODUCTION

.

2.Inside each environment(DEV,STAGING,PROODUCTION) one you want to create the following:

.

Mkdir -p /etc/ansible/inventory/DEV/group_vars
 This is where you can pass group variables if you have hosts setup as groups in your hosts file that we just created.
Mkdir -p /etc/ansible/inventory/DEV/host_vars
 This is where you pass specific variables per host instead of groups
Touch /etc/ansible/inventory/DEV/hosts
3.Open up one of the host files in your favorite editor vi, nano, joe, visual studio, etc….

.

 vi /etc/ansible/inventory/DEV/hosts

.

For the purposes of this post we are just going to
create one group
=====================================

.

[All]

nicktestvm.nicktailor.com ansible_host=192.168.1.200

=====================================

.

 Save file

.

Note: ansible_host=(ip) This is used when you want to override dns of the host and tell ansible. Do not resolve the dns this host only connect to this ip. You don’t need this here, however if your’re using ‘a’ static address to deploy vm’s initially and not using vmwre_tools to configure the network, and went with SSH after for configuration of the host. Then it will need to know which host to connect to setup the network. So I just like to have there in case I want to temporary tell ansible look here for this server.

4.Now we want to create host_var for the specific VM host we want to deploy.

.

 Create a host_var file for the new host you want to deplo
Vi /etc/ansible/inventory/DEV/host_vars/nicktestvm

.Note: You can see all the variables that were in the role and defaults are now being passed through here for this specific host. It has to be done in this fashion for it all work correctly. If you pass all this through the role may crap out on you.

.

#vm_requirements

vm_ip: 192.168.1.86

vm_netmask: 255.255.255.0

vm_gateway: 192.168.1.1

vm_vlan_name: VM76123

VMTemplate: redhat-template2020

vm_folder: /Production/Unix

vm_state: poweredon

vm_connected: true

vm_datastore: vmfs-datastore1234

note: vm_dns_servers: this section is very important. This was the only way I could get the dns server to parse and update the /etc/resolv.conf properly. If you list them out individually as one lineers. It seems to be a bug and will simply empty out the file, which will leave your vm unable to resolve dns.

vm_dns_servers: [8.8.8.1, 8.8.8.2]

vm_dns_suffix: nicktailor.co.uk

.

 Save the file

.

Setting Ansible Vault and Encrypted variables:

.

5.Setting up the vmware-user password to be encrypted using ansible vault. Now this can be easily decrypted by anyone who has the vault password. But the benefit is that its not directly visible in your open code for prying as eyes. Which is just a generally good idea.

.

 So you want to create vault password for the variable in side defaults which was “vcenter_password”. Keep in mind variable is apart of the encrypted process.

there a couple of ways to do this you can do it via file, or via prompt.
I’m going to show you how to do it via file.
First create a vault password file
Echo “password” >> vault.pw.txt
Cat vault.pw.txt (to ensure the password is now there)
 This the password for the ansible vault not the password for your vcenter_password
Now encrypt the vcenter_password as a varible inside the vault as id1. It good to use id’s incase you you want to have multiple passwords inside your vault.

Note: the –-name is the variable you want to pass in your code. So whatever you call that has to be there.

ansible-vault encrypt_string –vault-id 1@vault.pass.txt ‘vcenter-password-here’ –name ‘vcenter_password

 

vcenter_password: !vault |

$ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.2;AES256;1

31623638366337643437633065623538663565336232333863303763336364396438663032363364

3665376363663839306165663435356365643965343364310a313832393261363466393237666666

36666437626563386366653938383565663361646333333732336439356633616231653639626465

3130656134383365320a323032366238303366336562653865663130333963316237393839373830

65396139323739323266643961653766333633366638336435613933373966643561

Encryption successful

.

6.Okay now you want copy by highlighting this section below

.

.

vcenter_password: !vault |

$ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.2;AES256;1

31623638366337643437633065623538663565336232333863303763336364396438663032363364

3665376363663839306165663435356365643965343364310a313832393261363466393237666666

36666437626563386366653938383565663361646333333732336439356633616231653639626465

3130656134383365320a323032366238303366336562653865663130333963316237393839373830

65396139323739323266643961653766333633366638336435613933373966643561

.

 open your /etc/ansible/roles/ansible-vmware-deploy/defaults/main.yml
vi etc/ansible/roles/ansible-vmware-deploy/defaults/main.yml

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 Next replace the whole ‘vcenter_password’ line with the highlight section above and save the file.
  •  •  You should also store the vault password somewhere offsite in some password database and delete the vault.pass.txt file you created.

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Deploy VM with ansible:

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 From inside the /etc/ansible directory you now need to create your playbook that will call the role you just setup.

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 Create a new playbook file standard_build.yml
Vi standard_build.yml

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 Now add the following:

– hosts: all

  gather_facts: no

roles:

– role: ansible-vmware-deploy

 Save the file

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 Now you want to call the new role to deploy against the environment and specific host we setup earlier

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 Still from inside the /etc/ansible directory you want to run all your playbooks from here

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ansible-playbook –i inventory/DEV/hosts –-ask-vault standard_build.yml

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Note: Important thing to remember when deploying linux machines from a template is that all your machines will have the same ‘Network’ UUID as the template machine. If you define these…. You will need to write some code to fix that up after the VM is deployed and powered up. Check  out the link below on how to do that.

http://www.nicktailor.com/?p=1177

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Special Note: if you attempt to deploy multiple hosts at the same time. This will deploy 5 clones in parallel at a time and not one by one. Which will reduce deployment time significantly. I didnt bother to see if i could override this….:)

Output log of successful automated ansible deploy:

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[root@nickansible]# ansible-playbook –i inventory/DEV/hosts standard_build.yml –ask-vault –limit ‘nicktestvm

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Vault password: (paste password here in your shell window)

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PLAY [all] ****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

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TASK [ansible-vmware-deploy : Validate Project Requirements] **********************************************************************************************************************************************

ok

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TASK [ansible-vmware-deploy : Login into vCenter and get cookies] *****************************************************************************************************************************************

ok: [nicktestvm]

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TASK [ansible-vmware-deploy : Create a VM] ****************************************************************************************************************************************************************

changed: [nicktestvm]

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TASK [ansible-vmware-deploy : debug] **********************************************************************************************************************************************************************

ok: [nicktestvm] => {

“vm_deploy.instance.hw_eth0.macaddress”: “00:40:51:53:11:a6”

}

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nicktestvm            : ok=4 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0

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How to increase disk size on virtual scsi drive using gpart

1.Login to VMware vSphere Client and shutdown server VM guest.
2.Select VM Guest server and click “Edit virtual machine settings”. Virtual Machine Properties window will appear. Under “Hardware”, click Hard Disk 2 (which is /data partition) and edit provision size to 200 GB as shown in below screenshot.
Power ON VM guest after editing disk size.

vsphere

3.Take VM snapshot of VM guest.
4.Log on to VM Guest using SSH client, like PuTTy, with “root” user.
5.List the SCSI devices using command – cat /proc/scsi/scsi
disk7
6.Run following command to see the name of the partition
ls -d /sys/block/sd*/device/scsi_device/* |awk -F ‘[/]’ ‘{print $4,”- SCSI”,$7}’
disk8
7.Run following commands to confirm the size of the SCSI disk for which you have increased size in step 4 has been updated by the following steps
1.echo 1 > /sys/class/scsi_device/2\:0\:1\:0/device/rescan
2.fdisk -l | grep Disk
3.df -h
disk9_1
disk9_2
8.Stop cron and services using commands
service crond stop
9.Unmount “/data” partition using command — umount /data
Note: If you observe “Device is busy” error then make sure that your current session is not in /data partition.
10.Perform following steps to grow added disk space of /data partition based on partition type

For GPT partition type

In this case parted -l command will give below for “sdb” disk partition
*****************************************************

Model: VMware Virtual disk (
scsi)
Disk /dev/
sdb: 215GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B

Partition Table: gpt
Number  Start   End    Size   File system  Name       Flags

1      1049kB  215GB 
215GB  ext4         Linux LVM  lvm
*****************************************************

4.Execute command — gdisk /dev/sdb
5.Type “p” to print the partition
gpt_p
6.Type “d” to delete partition
gpt_d
7.Type “p” to check if partition is deleted
gpt_p1
8.Type “n” to create new partition
9.Type “1” as partition number
10.Press “Enter” twice
11.Type “8E00” as GUID
gpt_n
12.Type “p” to check newly added partition
gpt_p2
13.Type “w” to alter partition table
14.Type “Y” to continue
gpt_w
15.To mount /data partition run command – mount /data
16.To resize the file system run command – resize2fs /dev/sdb1 
17.To check increased disk space run command – df -h
gpt_df

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