Vmware ansible playbooks. This includes … Using variables makes code more reusable.

Vmware ansible playbooks In this guide about Ansible Playbooks, we have introduced the structure, basic syntax, and usage of Ansible Playbooks through practical examples. ; Document: Use the name field to explain plays and tasks. vmware. The engine uses a declarative language to describe the desired state of the infrastructure, and then applies the necessary changes to achieve that Ansible is an Infrastructure as Code tool that lets you manage and monitor a number of remote servers by using a single control node. How to create a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine with Ansible? I’m going to show you a live Playbook and some simple Ansible code. These are the elements that If the SSL certificate of your vCenter or ESXi server is not correctly installed on your Ansible control node, you will see the following warning when using Ansible VMware modules: Unable to connect to vCenter or ESXi API at xx. It can be used to modify various aspects of the virtual machine, including: network; disk; customization specification Using Ansible playbooks; Protecting sensitive data with Ansible vault; Using Ansible modules and plugins; Using Ansible collections; Using Ansible on Windows, BSD, and z/OS UNIX; Ansible tips and tricks; This module reflects the VMware vCenter API and UI workflow, as such, in some cases the `force` flag will be mandatory to perform the In this way, you can run any shell command on any of the hosts (SSH must be enabled on ESXi). To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community. Red Hat OpenShift Platform. The Azure cloud shell automatically logs you in your azure subscription so you need not to do anything extra other than login to cluod shell and run the ansible-playbook command with -e switch to provide resource_group_name variable value. So, in order to use these playbooks you need to have vCenter version greater than equal to 6. Ansible Documentation. The vmware. Subscribe. If you are going to use Pyvmomi based (XMLRPC based) modules then you Ansible playbooks are YAML configuratiom files that describe what actions to run on a remote host. /library directory relative to its YAML file, this directory can be used to add ansible modules that will automatically be in the ansible module path. While Ansible is great for configuration management, Terraform is the tool that I use for actually building my infrastructure. Introduction to Ansible for VMware; Ansible for VMware Concepts; VMware Prerequisites; Playbook. c:777) Playbooks are Ansible’s configuration, deployment, and orchestration language. However, name are not necessarily unique in a VMWare cluster. cd ~/ansible ; nano playbook. ovf. ; Conclusion. Likewise, Ansible Playbooks are a group of ad-hoc commands with additional programming elements like loops, iterations, conditionals etc. Once everything is done with the Ansible installation, it’s time to launch your first Ansible Playbook. An ordered list of tasks that maps to managed nodes in an inventory. Ansible Essentials: Simplicity in Automation Technical Overview. vmware_cluster_vsan. vsphere_host, the address/hostname of the vcenter server; vsphere_user, a username with enough vSphere privileges to create VMs from templates; vsphere_datacenter, the vSphere datacenter name; vsphere_folder, the folder where to drop Using Ansible playbooks; Protecting sensitive data with Ansible vault; Using Ansible modules and plugins; Using Ansible collections; Using Ansible on Windows, BSD, and z/OS UNIX; These are the collections with docs hosted on docs. Deploy a new VM . Learn about solutions. When you perform CRUD operations on Kubernetes objects, Ansible playbooks enable you to quickly and easily access the full range of Kubernetes APIs through the OpenShift Python client. First two are essentially done and third one is waiting on a good solution (for our environment) on how to communicate with the VMs. 5), but none for managing standalone ESXi hosts. Advantages Of Using Ansible Playbooks. ; Test Locally: Verify playbooks on a test environment before applying them to production. This series will walk you through the main Ansible features that you can use to write playbooks This will allow you to have a tracked and version source for all your playbooks and even revert changes, etc. Manage snapshot(s) attached to a specific virtual machine. Ansible Inventories (Static and Dynamic Inventories) How to work with Managed nodes if managed nodes are not installed with Python. Once you merge/push your git repo, you ensure the separate AWX The Ansible itself is pretty interesting as you can create a playbook and then use this playbook on different computers at a time. As shown in Figure 4, place the server address and user credentials in a separate file named vars. aerospike_migrations – Check or wait for migrations between nodes Using Ansible playbooks; Protecting sensitive data with Ansible vault; Using Ansible modules and plugins; Using Ansible collections; Using Ansible on Windows, BSD, and z/OS UNIX; Ansible tips and tricks; Gather vmware host facts community. yml; The following playbook has a single play and runs on all hosts from your inventory file, by default. How to run Ansible playbook. Please read the full documentation for how-to guidance, requirements, and all other details. --become Sean knew of Dave and had already been working on some Ansible Playbooks and pointed me to his blog. . You will have to set the version One way to ensure that your VMware ESXi hosts have a consistent and repeatable configuration; is with the use of Ansible. yml. Terraform and Packer. I use it to build things in VMware vSphere, Proxmox, and the cloud. Very easy to use and great for those who doesn’t like PowerShell scripting with PowerCli. ansible. Task Using Ansible playbooks; Protecting sensitive data with Ansible vault; Using Ansible modules and plugins; Using Ansible collections; Using Ansible on Windows, BSD, and z/OS UNIX; Ansible tips and tricks; Contributing to Ansible. Step-by-Step Breakdown 1. Ansible keywords are the fundamental elements that are used for structuring and defining the automation of tasks in the Playbooks with YAML syntax. 04, and Mac OS . The vSphere Automation Python SDK also has client libraries, documentation, and sample code for VMware Cloud on AWS Console APIs, NSX VMware Cloud on AWS integration APIs, VMware Cloud on AWS site recovery APIs, NSX-T APIs. Where I work I've been tasked with making Ansible playbooks for creating templates, deploy/destroy machines, and installing extra software. In this part I want to show how to deploy a vCenter automatically using Ansible. I’m going to show you how to take a snapshot of the Virtual Machine named “myvm” using Ansible Playbook setting a name and description to easily find in your VMware vCenter. This allows you to create and run Ansible Playbooks directly on your Ansible VM using an SSH connection. . Ansible Playbooks offer a repeatable, reusable, simple configuration management and multi-machine deployment system, one that is well suited to deploying complex applications. Managing VM. - name: start vm hosts: localhost become: false gather_facts: false This project provides ansible playbooks for these script suites and keep it as distro agnostic as possible. ; Red Hat Enterprise Linux A flexible, stable operating system to support hybrid cloud innovation. If set to present and snapshot present, then no changes are made. vmware_host_facts: hostname: " Tutorial Series: How To Write Ansible Playbooks. •ansible_uptime: System uptime. com in the vmware namespace. We ended up using subnets to create facts via /etc/ansible/facts. This leads Note: this guide is intended to get you introduced to the Ansible language and how to write playbooks to automate your server provisioning. Course Structure Working With Playbooks; Understanding privilege escalation: become; Ansible Vault; Working With Modules. Find apps for the leading enterprise Kubernetes platform. Not everyone is going to be fortunate enough to have cloud playgrounds to test out new things, and home labs are a great way to make a one-time investment in your future. This declarative approach allows users to focus on the desired state of the system These options were available in the past collection for Ansible playbooks specifically meant for vSphere, but it was taken out in preference for template usage, while the community vmware Scalability: As your VMware environment grows, Ansible playbooks can scale to manage snapshots across more datacenters, clusters, and VMs. This page offers a quick reminder of some common use cases only - it may be out of date or incomplete or both. Password Authentication setup and explanation. Managing VM's Playbooks can include variables as well as tasks. 7 Update 1 Security Configuration Guide you will agree that the security configuration of VMware ESXi hosts is mostly about managing services, advanced options, firewall rules, and lockdown mode. Ansible playbooks •This can be from a file, a database, a key-value store, an environment variable, and more. Next, learn how to automate the creation of a virtual machine manually and from a template, start and stop using the shutdown and forced-power off a Virtual In this course, you will learn how to use Ansible playbook to manage VMWare components: Understanding VMWare components. Ansible for VMware by Examples # A Step-by-Step Guide to Automating Your VMware Infrastructure # Buy on Apress Buy on Amazon Learn to connect your hosts to Ansible (Inventory) Review how to execute commands with Ansible Using Ansible with VMware lets the teams implement a simple self-service IT model across all environments. Ansible validated content’s opinionated approach to what foundational use cases you should This post will help anyone who is attempting to use Ansible to create new VMs with automation when Practicing DevOps. If With Ansible, a powerful automation tool, and VMware, one of the leading virtualization platforms, you can simplify the process. vmware. 0+) features are using vSphere Automation Python SDK. I reached the part where I wanted to demo a few things with Ansible and VMware. January 26, 2022 Gineesh Madapparambath 5-minute read. xx on TCP/443: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl. Before writing a Playbook It is recommended that you have given a glance on the Ansible AD HOC Command how it works and how to execute them. Deploy multiple VMs . Playbooks are written in YAML and are easy to read, write, share and understand. The playbook tries to generate the next minor release automatically, but you can also set the version explicitly with --extra-vars "version=$VERSION". Ansible validated content is a new set of collections containing pre-built YAML content (such as playbooks or roles) to address the most common automation use cases. pyVmomi is the Python SDK for the VMware vSphere API that allows user to manage ESX, ESXi, and vCenter infrastructure. If Ansible modules are the tools in your workshop, playbooks are your instruction manuals, and your inventory of hosts are your raw material. Ansible provides various modules to manage VMware infrastructure, which includes data center, cluster, host system, and virtual machine. Whether tackling simple package installations or orchestrating complex clustered solutions, optimizing Ansible playbooks is key to faster execution. This guide will walk you through creating virtual machines using Using Ansible playbooks; Protecting sensitive data with Ansible vault; Using Ansible modules and plugins; Using Ansible collections; Using Ansible on Windows, BSD, and z/OS UNIX (HA) on VMware vSphere clusters. Documentation for Red Hat Virtualization 4. proxy_port. Managing Kubernetes objects. Installing Ansible playbook and pyvmomi module in CentOS 7, Ubuntu 16. Parameters: hostname, username, password: Credentials for connecting to VMware vCenter. Ansible has some great modules for VMware vCenter (especially in 2. •Usual format: The rest of this is “the easy part”. Introduction to modules; Return Values; Module Maintenance & Support add_host – Add a host (and alternatively a group) to the ansible-playbook in-memory inventory. How to Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot with Ansible. For this example, we’ll create a simple playbook called deploy-vms. This initial configuration sometimes is a roadblock for some VMware users See more Using Ansible can be a powerful way to maintain or deploy VMWare environments. Again in ansible-playbook command I am using -e ( — extra-variables) flag to pass arguments from command line. Red Hat OpenStack Platform. Most of this playbooks use name as the parameter to identify a VM. Synopsis. Language for the ansible playbook files is YAML/YML format. Play. pyVmomi ¶ Ansible VMware modules are written on top of pyVmomi. I use this in my home lab to help stay current with new trends in DevOps. To get started, please select one of the following topics. It’s about fine-tuning Note: Ansible Playbooks for SAP optionally use Ansible > Terraform. Automate VM deployment with Ansible: Design (Part 1) Automate VM deployment with Ansible: Automation (Part 2) References. One or more Ansible tasks can be combined to make a play—an ordered grouping of tasks mapped to specific hosts—and tasks are executed in the order in which they are written. Here ‘host’ is an invisible folder under VMware Web Client. Using Ansible playbooks offers several key advantages: Automation: Playbooks enable to automatically utilize repetitive, handmade procedures across the IT platform. The following Ansible, an open-source automation tool, simplifies IT infrastructure operations. Ansible is a configuration management tool from Red Hat that automates the process of configuring multiple servers and deploying applications. Ansible is a modern configuration management tool that doesn’t require the use of an agent software on remote nodes. Ansible allows users to manage servers in two different ways: via ad hoc commands, and via playbooks. If you read the vSphere 6. After Ansible 2. Playbooks are YAML files containing a list of The hardest part for us re: cross datacenter anything in Ansible was determining which creds/datacenter to use on which machines. yml to power on a specific virtual machine in VMware vCenter. Ansible Facts and Variables. The vmware_vm_info module fetches details about the specified virtual machine:. The information of worker nodes such as username, password, IP address, and protocol are specified in a file in Ansible manager known as Inventory. ; vm_names: Specify the name of the virtual machine. This playbook uses connection credentials from vmware_vars. xx. 5. This is where Ansible steps in, offering a powerful open-source platform to simplify and automate infrastructure management including the provisioning, patching, configuration, and management of operating systems and application components across enterprise data centers, cloud environments or Virtual infrastructures like VMware. Description . Here are four Ansible playbooks that you should try to further customize and configure how your automation works. Running Ansible Playbook. We have witnessed the power of Ansible Playbooks in action, from installing and configuring Apache web servers to managing users and groups. For a more introductory view of Ansible, including the steps necessary for installing and getting started with this tool, as well as how to run Ansible commands and playbooks, check our How to Install and Configure Ansible on Ubuntu Ansible Playbooks work by using the Ansible automation engine to execute tasks on remote hosts. As long as you have followed a long with the things I did earlier it should be quite simple. Prefix the variable names with vc_ to identify them as the variables for the vCenter environment. These real-world examples demonstrate how Ansible Playbooks Ansible Playbooks are lists of tasks that automatically execute for your specified inventory or groups of hosts. pyVmomi is the official Python SDK for the VMware vSphere API that allows user to manage ESX, ESXi, and vCenter infrastructure. ; datacenter: The datacenter containing the VM. If set to absent and snapshot absent, then no changes are made. Introduction. vmware Ansible Collection. Ansible Ad-hoc commands. The playbook above will create a new VM called web02 and place it on a datastore called iscsi-datastore01. This collection brings forward the You should create a group_var file in order to set the variables that don't usually change in order to simplify playbook file, such as. vmware_guest_disk module – Manage disks related to virtual machine in given vCenter infrastructure Playbooks are automation blueprints, in YAML format, that Ansible uses to deploy and configure managed nodes. In the Ansible VMware modules leveraging latest vSphere(6. Keep It Simple: Avoid overly complex logic in playbooks. A list of plays that define the order in which Ansible performs operations, from top to bottom, to achieve an overall goal. Requirements ¶ Ansible VMware modules are written on top of pyVmomi . If you’re using multiple servers, Ansible playbooks organize the steps between the assembled machines or Ansible VMware modules leveraging latest vSphere(6. To instead use Terraform > Ansible, see Terraform Templates for SAP. It streamlines the process of creating virtual machines (VMs) across on-premises environments (libvirt) and cloud-based platforms (such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP)). Check out the VMware validated content on Ansible automation hub: cloud. Ansible is a powerful open-source automation tool used for configuration management, application deployment, and task automation. Gather VM Information. This is a great way to keep modules that go with a An Ansible playbook is a structured document that defines a set of tasks, configurations, and plays to be executed by Ansible. d so we'd have our DC in a fact available for every play whenever we wanted to Hello everyone, I’m currently learning more about ansible and I gotta say I am enjoying it. If set to absent and snapshot present, then snapshot with the given name is removed. Playbooks in Ansible are files that define a series of tasks to be executed on remote hosts. Using Ansible playbooks; Protecting sensitive data with Ansible vault; Using Ansible modules and plugins; Using Ansible collections; Using Ansible on Windows, BSD, and z/OS UNIX If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable VMWARE_PROXY_HOST will be used instead. vmware_guest_disk; Purpose: Manage disks related to virtual machines in a given vCenter infrastructure; The Ansible module vmware_guest_disk is part of the In ansible-playbook command I am using -l ( — limit) flag to call only my Vcenter tag in the inventory. These playbooks relay instructions to remote servers and allow them to execute predefined tasks. If you need to execute a task with Ansible more than once, write a playbook and put it under source control. ; Result Storage: The result is stored in Declarative Language: Ansible playbooks use a simple, human-readable language to define tasks and configurations. See the project home page (https://docs. copy the vcsa ova to your Ansible VMware directory. Module: community. Integration : Ansible integrates seamlessly with other automation tools, allowing you to combine snapshot management with other automation workflows, like VM provisioning or backups. Ansible is a modern configuration management tool that doesn’t require the use of an agent software on remote nodes, using only SSH and Python to communicate and execute commands on managed servers. 3. Here are ten methods to enhance Ansible Playbook performance: 8 ways to speed up your Ansible playbooks . If you don’t use it, ansible will try to execute on every machine in your inventory. 4. 5 and onwards. The become directive is then used to indicate that the following tasks must be executed by a super user (root by default). 8 was released, the Ansible Modules for vmware that were released made Single Touch a reality. Then you can use the playbook to push out new configuration With Ansible, a powerful automation tool, and VMware, one of the leading virtualization platforms, you can simplify the process. In the playbook, then use the pre-task include_vars to get the values for the parameters you want to process. Using Ansible playbooks; Protecting sensitive data with Ansible vault; Using Ansible modules and plugins; Using Ansible collections; Using Ansible on Windows, BSD, and z/OS UNIX; community. Back to all posts ; Ansible is a Ansible Installation and Configuration with directory structure and Architecture. Optimization for Performance, Reliability, and Maintainability: Optimizing Ansible playbooks is not merely a technical enhancement; it’s a strategic imperative. This repo hosts the vmware. I so far like Ansible and what it can do within a few days time. You'll configure the Ansible Controller to interact with VMware infrastructure using the “community. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. There are many cases when full vCenter infrastructure is not required and web-based Host UI is quite enough for Good write, and good first step into it. They can describe a policy you want your remote systems to enforce, or a set of steps in a general IT process. kvm, qemu, vmware). Ansible playbooks run multiple tasks, assign roles, and define configurations, deployment steps, and variables. community. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s In this article, I will be sharing my experience of automating the manual process of provisioning/modifying virtual machines on vCenter using Run ansible-playbook tools/prepare_release. When it comes to VMware, Ansible has a large array of modules that allow you to effectively interact with your vSphere environment. Make sure to check out his website for some amazing content. With Ansible, you can manage remote servers by using playbooks. To use it in a playbook, specify: community. Automation and management Professional development Share. •ansible_users: A list of user accounts on the system. All for a VMware environment. A playbook can include 1 or more plays as well as Ansible Roles—bundles of Red Hat AI A portfolio for developing and deploying artificial intelligence solutions across the hybrid cloud. integer. This is defined by the hosts: all directive at the beginning of the file. vcenter_vm_tools_installer module – Connects the VMware Tools CD installer as a CD-ROM for the guest operating system. yml that will use the vmware_guest module to deply a VM from template. The automation engine communicates with the hosts over SSH or WinRM, depending on the operating system. privilege escalation method to use (default=sudo), use ansible-doc -t become -l to list valid choices. One of the core features that makes Ansible so effective is its Playbooks. Step by Step. Using Ansible playbooks; Protecting sensitive data with Ansible vault; Using Ansible modules and plugins; Using Ansible collections; Using Ansible on Windows, BSD, and z/OS UNIX community. Sample playbooks. Manages virtual storage area network (vSAN) configuration on VMware vSphere clusters. Automate with speed and efficiency on the industry leading end-to-end automation platform. ; Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform A foundation for implementing enterprise-wide What is an Ansible playbook? An Ansible playbook is an organized unit of scripts that defines the tasks involved in managing a system configuration using the automation tool Ansible. Ansible Documentation [ Need more on Ansible? Take a free technical overview course from Red Hat. It defines two tasks: one to install required How to Expand a Virtual Disk in VMware vSphere Virtual Machine with Ansible? I’m going to show you a live Playbook and some simple Ansible code. vmware_ops. Remediation is done by regular ansible playbook runs Validation is done by setting -e verify=true in command line. I suggest you check out my other article How to manage and run Ansible Playbooks remotely. vcenter_vm_tools_info module – Get the properties of VMware Tools. Ansible Keywords. Understanding VMWare and Ansible concept. Instead, it uses only SSH and Python to communicate and execute commands on managed servers. Let’s create a simple Ansible playbook vm_start. You would test/debug your playbooks on a separate Ansible server (CLI-style), get them to work and build your git repo there. Common Options --become-method <BECOME_METHOD> . vmware_vm_shell module – Run commands in a Ansible provides various modules to manage VMware infrastructure, which includes datacenter, cluster, host system and virtual machine. ; Red Hat OpenShift A container platform to build, modernize, and deploy applications at scale. The Ansible Community has created all the modules required to do the VMware ESXi Security Configuration with Ansible. ; Use Roles: Break large playbooks into reusable roles. This includes Using variables makes code more reusable. Summary documentation is below: Ansible Playbooks for SAP - execution workflow summary diagram On this second part article of after How to install Ansible on Linux for vSphere configuration, I have written here 2 Ansible playbook files (play tasks created) to configure VMWare ESXi servers. A playbook is the core component of any Ansible Best Practices for Ansible Playbooks. This guide will walk you through creating virtual machines using VMware HTTP APIs are supported in vCenter 6. \\nThis blog post Ansible playbooks that automate deployment and configuration of nested VMware Software-Defined Data Center environments including solutions like vSphere, vSAN, NSX, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service, NSX Advanced Load Balancer, Aria Introduction. extract the vcsa ova to your Ansible VMware Directory and rename the ova to something shorter, I named mine vcsa7. I have created an ansible playbook that can be run against a VMware ESXi host to a desired Apr 23, 2025 Ansible playbooks to manage vmware infrastructure. The Ansible vmware_guest module is used to create new virtual machines from vSphere templates or from cloning other virtual machines that exist in the vSphere inventory. Welcome to the Ansible for VMware Guide! The purpose of this guide is to teach you everything you need to know about using Ansible with VMware. vmware collection is part of the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for VMware offering that brings Ansible automation to VMware. Ansible playbooks are the backbone of Ansible automation, Ansible CLI cheatsheet This page shows one or more examples of each Ansible command line utility with some common flags added and a link to the full documentation for the command. the tool to run Ansible playbooks, which are a configuration and multinode deployment system. If set to present and snapshot absent, then will create a new snapshot with the given name. com) for more information. vmware_vcenter_settings_info . Bundling Ansible Modules With Playbooks ¶ If a playbook has a . vcenter_vm_tools module – Update the properties of VMware Tools. •ansible_env: Environment variables of the user executing Ansible. vcenter_vm_tools_installer_info module – Get information about the VMware Tools installer. verification does not require additional parsing to determine outcome. Introduction to Ansible Playbooks The Cornerstone Collection is a lab provisioning tool built on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot. I’ll show you step by step how to prepare your Ansible controller to interact with the VMware infrastructure. Playbook. VMware” Ansible documentation collection and the appropriate Python libraries. yaml. Visualize resources, organize clouds, and manage them. Anyway, so I created a playbook to create snapshots for a single vm host using the UUID, but I am curious if anyone has created or if there’s a way to create multiple snapshots at one time? The only thing I can think of, only because I’m a noob, is to add each uuid into the Automate VM deployment with Ansible: Design (Part 1) Automate VM deployment with Ansible: The playbooks (Part 3) References. When it comes to VMware infrastructure automation, you can automate ESXi installations, ESXi Ansible is a tremendously powerful tool for automation across the board. vtvih lifrcw oipc zsmjne hbkxr tvchs sojoo xgxagz rmpyhcbo dgzygp fput bou qbiiw uwko gzq