Part 17 – VMware Automation with AAP: Deploying VM’s

Instead of clicking around vCenter, we write a single Ansible playbook that handles any VM. AWX gives it a web form (called a survey) so anyone can run it without touching the command line.

Each playbook does one thing. No hardcoded VM names and everything comes in as a variable at runtime so we will add playbooks in this format.

playbooks/
├── get_all_vms.yml ← inventory
├── get_vm_info.yml ← VM details
├── vm_hardware.yml ← change RAM/CPU
├── vm_snapshot.yml ← snapshot management
├── vm_power.yml ← power on/off/restart
├── vm_deploy.yml ← deploy from template
├── vm_delete.yml ← delete VM
├── vm_network.yml ← change network
└── vm_disk.yml ← add/expand disk

Add a new playbook to vm_deploy.yml

---
- name: Deploy VM from Template
  hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  connection: local
  become: false

  vars:
    sizes:
      small:   { cpu: 2,  ram_mb: 4096  }
      medium:  { cpu: 4,  ram_mb: 8192  }
      large:   { cpu: 8,  ram_mb: 16384 }
      xlarge:  { cpu: 16, ram_mb: 32768 }

  tasks:
    - name: Validate template
      fail:
        msg: "Invalid template! Must be: windows2019_template, windows2022_template"
      when: template_name not in ['windows2019_template', 'windows2022_template']

    - name: Validate size
      fail:
        msg: "Invalid size! Must be: small, medium, large, xlarge"
      when: size not in ['small', 'medium', 'large', 'xlarge']

    - name: Set hardware from size
      set_fact:
        vm_cpu: "{{ sizes[size].cpu }}"
        vm_ram_mb: "{{ sizes[size].ram_mb }}"

    - name: Show deployment plan
      debug:
        msg:
          - "=== DEPLOYMENT PLAN ==="
          - "New VM Name   : {{ vm_name }}"
          - "Template      : {{ template_name }}"
          - "Size          : {{ size }}"
          - "CPUs          : {{ vm_cpu }}"
          - "RAM (GB)      : {{ (vm_ram_mb | int / 1024) | int }}GB"
          - "Datastore     : {{ datastore | default('NVMe -01') }}"
          - "Customization : vm_customization"

    - name: Deploy VM from template
      community.vmware.vmware_guest:
        hostname: "{{ lookup('env', 'VMWARE_HOST') }}"
        username: "{{ lookup('env', 'VMWARE_USER') }}"
        password: "{{ lookup('env', 'VMWARE_PASSWORD') }}"
        validate_certs: false
        datacenter: "Datacenter"
        cluster: "Cluster"
        folder: "/Datacenter/vm"
        name: "{{ vm_name }}"
        template: "{{ template_name }}"
        datastore: "{{ datastore | default('SmallDatastore') }}"
        customization_spec: "vm_customization"
        hardware:
          memory_mb: "{{ vm_ram_mb }}"
          num_cpus: "{{ vm_cpu }}"
        state: poweredoff
      register: deploy_result

    - name: Show result
      debug:
        msg:
          - "=== VM DEPLOYED ==="
          - "VM Name  : {{ vm_name }}"
          - "Template : {{ template_name }}"
          - "Size     : {{ size }} ({{ vm_cpu }}CPU / {{ (vm_ram_mb | int / 1024) | int }}GB RAM)"
          - "Status   : {{ deploy_result.instance.hw_power_status }}"

Deploy a VM via our Windows 2022 template

ansible-playbook /etc/ansible/playbooks/vm_deploy.yml -e "vm_name=test-vm-03 template_name=windows2022_template size=small"

Deploy a VM via our Windows 2019 template

ansible-playbook /etc/ansible/playbooks/vm_deploy.yml -e "vm_name=test-vm-04 template_name=windows2019_template size=small"

That is a clean install

Lets run the git and push it all

AWX → Projects → VMware Automation → Sync