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

You first must set your GOPATH. If you are unsure, please review the documentation at.

https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/SettingGOPATH

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

mkdir $HOME/go
export GOPATH="$HOME/go"

go get -u -v golang.org/x/crypto/ssh
go get -u -v github.com/hashicorp/terraform
go get -u -v github.com/josenk/terraform-provider-esxi

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/josenk/terraform-provider-esxi
CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -a -ldflags '-w -extldflags "-static"' -o terraform-provider-esxi_`cat version`

sudo 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

• Added support for GuestInfo. (Thanks for the contribution silasb.)
  • This adds great provisioning options like Ignition and Cloud-Init!

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.

terraform {
  required_version = ">= 0.12"
}

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 upto 10 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.
  • 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 '3:15'. SCSI_id 7 is not allowed.
  • 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.
  • notes - Optional - The Guest notes (annotation).
  • guestinfo - Optional - The Guestinfo root
    • metadata - Optional - A JSON string containing the cloud-init metadata.
    • metadata.encoding - Optional - The encoding type for guestinfo.metadata. (base64 or gzip+base64)
    • userdata - Optional - A YAML document containing the cloud-init user data.
    • userdata.encoding - Optional - The encoding type for guestinfo.userdata. (base64 or gzip+base64)
    • vendordata - Optional - A YAML document containing the cloud-init vendor data.
    • vendordata.encoding - Optional - The encoding type for guestinfo.vendordata (base64 or gzip+base64)

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.
• Only numvcpus are supported. numcores is not supported.
• Doesn't support CDrom or floppy.
• Doesn't support Shared bus Interfaces, or Shared disks
• Using an incorrect password could lockout your account using default esxi pam settings.

Version History

• 1.5.2 Handle large userdata using scp. Connectivity test will retry only 3 times to help prevent account lockout.
• 1.5.1 Windows Fix for special characters in esxi password.
• 1.5.0 Support for Terraform 0.12, migrated examples to 0.12 format. Support to modify virtual_network & nic_type. Windows fixes.
• 1.4.3 Fix virtdisk count. Fixes to support Terraform 0.12
• 1.4.2 Support 10 nics, more README changes
• 1.4.1 Fix README build instructions, static binaries, update guest types
• 1.4.0 Add GuestInfo (Cloud-init, Ignition!). Fix, allow esxi passwords with special characters.
• 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