Terraform Provider

• Website: https://www.terraform.io
• 
• Mailing list: Google Groups

Requirements

• Terraform 0.10.1+
• Go 1.9 (to build the provider plugin)
• ovftool from VMware. NOTE: ovftool installer for windows doesn't put ovftool.exe in your path. You will need to manually set your path.
• You MUST enable ssh access on your ESXi hypervisor.

• Google 'How to enable ssh access on esxi'

• In general, you should know how to use terraform, esxi and some networking...

• You will most likely need a DHCP server on your primary network if you are deploying VMs with public OVF/OVA/VMX images. (Sources that have unconfigured primary interfaces.)

• The source OVF/OVA/VMX images must have open-vm-tools or vmware-tools installed to properly import an IPaddress. (you need this to run provisioners)

Building The Provider

Clone repository to: $GOPATH/src/github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-esxi

export GOPATH="/usr/local/lib"
go get -u golang.org/x/crypto/ssh

mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/hashicorp
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/hashicorp
git clone https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform.git

mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/terraform-providers
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/terraform-providers
git clone https://github.com/josenk/terraform-provider-esxi.git

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-esxi
go build -o terraform-provider-esxi_`cat version`

cp terraform-provider-esxi_`cat version` /usr/local/bin

Terraform-provider-esxi plugin

• This is a Terraform plugin that adds a VMware ESXi provider support. This allows Terraform to control and provision VMs directly on an ESXi hypervisor without a need for vCenter or VShpere. ESXi hypervisor is a free download from VMware!

https://www.vmware.com/go/get-free-esxi

• If you don't know terraform, I highly recommend you read through the introduction on the hashicorp website.

https://www.terraform.io/intro/getting-started/install.html

• VMware Configuration Maximums tool.

https://configmax.vmware.com/guest

What's New:

• Terraform can import existing Guest VMs, Virtual Disks & Resource pools by name. See wiki page for more info.

https://github.com/josenk/terraform-provider-esxi/wiki/How-to-import

Features and Compatibility

• Source image can be a clone of a VM or local vmx, ovf, ova file. This provider uses ovftool, so there should be a wide compatibility.
• Supports adding your VM to Resource Pools to partition CPU and memory usage from other VMs on your ESXi host.
• Terraform will Create, Destroy, Update & Read Resource Pools.
• Terraform will Create, Destroy, Update & Read Guest VMs.
• Terraform will Create, Destroy, Update & Read Extra Storage for Guests.

Vagrant vs Terraform.

If you are using vagrant as a deployment tool (infa as code), you may want to consider a better tool. Terraform. Vagrant is better for development environments, while Terraform is better at managing infrastructure. Please give my terraform plugin a try and give me some feedback. What you're trying to do, what's missing, what works, what doesn't work, etc...

https://www.vagrantup.com/intro/vs/terraform.html https://github.com/josenk/terraform-provider-esxi https://github.com/josenk/vagrant-vmware-esxi

Why this plugin?

Not everyone has vCenter, vSphere, expensive APIs... These cost $$$. ESXi is free!

How to install

Download and install Terraform on your local system using instructions from https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html. Clone this plugin from github, build and place a copy of it in your path or current directory of your terraform project. Or download pre-built binaries from https://github.com/josenk/terraform-provider-esxi/releases.

How to use and configure a main.tf file

1. cd SOMEDIR
2. vi main.tf # Use the contents of this example main.tf as a template. Specify provider parameters to access your ESXi host. Modify the resources for resource pools and guest vm.

provider "esxi" {
  esxi_hostname      = "esxi"
  esxi_hostport      = "22"
  esxi_username      = "root"
  esxi_password      = "MyPassword"
}

resource "esxi_guest" "vmtest" {
  guest_name         = "vmtest"
  disk_store         = "MyDiskStore"

  #
  #  Specify an existing guest to clone, an ovf source, or neither to build a bare-metal guest vm.
  #
  #clone_from_vm      = "Templates/centos7"
  #ovf_source        = "/local_path/centos-7.vmx"

  network_interfaces = [
    {
      virtual_network = "VM Network"
    },
  ]
}

Basic usage

3. terraform init
4. terraform plan
5. terraform apply
6. terraform show
7. terraform destroy

Configuration reference

• provider "esxi"

  • esxi_hostname - Required
  • esxi_hostport - Optional - Default "22".
  • esxi_username - Optional - Default "root".
  • esxi_password - Required

• resource "esxi_resource_pool"

  • resource_pool_name - Required - The Resource Pool name.
  • cpu_min - Optional
  • cpu_min_expandable - Optional
  • cpu_max - Optional
  • cpu_shares - Optional
  • mem_min - Optional
  • mem_min_expandable - Optional
  • mem_max - Optional
  • mem_shares - Optional

• resource "esxi_virtual_disk"

  • virtual_disk_disk_store - Required - esxi Disk Store where guest vm will be created.
  • virtual_disk_dir - Required - Disk dir.
  • virtual_disk_name - Optional - Virtual Disk Name. A random virtual disk name will be generated if nil.
  • virtual_disk_size - Optional - Virtual Disk size in GB. Default 1GB.
  • virtual_disk_type - Optional - Virtual Disk type. (thin, zeroedthick or eagerzeroedthick) Default 'thin'.

• resource "esxi_guest"

  • guest_name - Required - The Guest name.
  • ip_address - Computed - The IP address reported by VMware tools.
  • boot_disk_type - Optional - Guest boot disk type. Default 'thin'. Available thin, zeroedthick, eagerzeroedthick.
  • boot_disk_size - Optional - Specify boot disk size or grow cloned vm to this size.
  • guestos - Optional - Default will be taken from cloned source.
  • clone_from_vm - Source vm to clone. Mutually exclusive with ovf_source option.
  • ovf_source - ovf files to use as a source. Mutually exclusive with clone_from_vm option.
  • disk_store - Required - esxi Disk Store where guest vm will be created.
  • resource_pool_name - Optional - Any existing or terraform managed resource pool name. - Default "/".
  • memsize - Optional - Memory size in MB. (ie, 1024 == 1GB). See esxi documentation for limits. - Default 512 or default taken from cloned source.
  • numvcpus - Optional - Number of virtual cpus. See esxi documentation for limits. - Default 1 or default taken from cloned source.
  • virthwver - Optional - esxi guest virtual HW version. See esxi documentation for compatible values. - Default 8 or taken from cloned source.
  • network_interfaces - Array of network interfaces.
    • virtual_network - Required for each Guest NIC - This is the esxi virtual network name configured on esxi host.
    • mac_address - Optional - If not set, mac_address will be generated by esxi.
    • nic_type - Optional - See esxi documentation for compatibility list. - Default "e1000" or taken from cloned source.
  • power - Optional - on, off.
  • guest_startup_timeout - Optional - The amount of guest uptime, in seconds, to wait for an available IP address on this virtual machine.
  • guest_shutdown_timeout - Optional - The amount of time, in seconds, to wait for a graceful shutdown before doing a forced power off.
  • virtual_disks - Optional - Array of additional storage to be added to the guest.
    • virtual_disk_id - Required - virtual_disk.id from esxi_virtual_disk resource.
    • slot - Required - SCSI_Ctrl:SCSI_id. Range '0:1' to '0:15'. SCSI_id 7 is not allowed.
  • notes - Optional - The Guest notes (annotation).

Known issues with vmware_esxi

• terraform import cannot import the guest disk type (thick, thin, etc) if the VM is powered on and cannot import the guest ip_address if it's powered off.
• It doesn't configure additional scsi controllers yet.
• Only numvcpus are supported. numcores is not supported.
• Doesn't support CDrom or floppy.

Version History

• 1.3.0 Add support to Update storage attachments.
• 1.2.2 fix guest_update power, boot_disk_type defaults, README, windows support
• 1.2.1 Fix ssh connection retries.
• 1.2.0 Add support for notes (annotation)
• 1.1.1 Fix, unable to provision ova sources. go fmt.
• 1.1.0 Add Import support.
• 1.0.2 Switch authentication method to Keyboard Interactive. Read disk_type (thin, thick, etc)
• 1.0.1 Validate DiskStores and refresh
• 1.0.0 First Major release
• 0.1.2 Add ability to manage existing Guest VMs. A lot of code cleanup, various fixes, more validation.
• 0.1.0 Add virtual_disk resource.
• 0.0.8 Add virthwver.
• 0.0.7 build vmx from scratch if no source is specified
• 0.0.6 Add power resource.
• 0.0.5 Add network_interfaces resource.
• 0.0.4 Add more stuff.
• 0.0.3 Add memory and numvcpus resource. Add support to update some guests params.
• 0.0.2 Add Resource Pool resource.
• 0.0.1 Init release