Deploy ESXi+vsphere lab on libvirt

Description

This playbook will deploy:

• a local vsphere
• two ESXi
• a datastore VM (with a NFS)

It can easier target a local Libvirt hypervisor, or an OpenStack tenant.

Requirements

• a Python virtualenv
• memory 20GB
• vcpus: 2 for vcenter, 1 for ESXi, more will probably seriously increase the performance
• Ansible 2.8+
• Qcow2 Images. If you can get access to some existing images, it's better. The creation process is time consuming.
  • ESXi: https://github.com/virt-lightning/esxi-cloud-images
  • vcenter: https://github.com/goneri/vcsa_to_qcow2
• A copy of the following repository in the ../ansible-zuul directory.

  mkdir ../ansible-zuul
  git clone https://github.com/ansible/ansible-zuul-jobs ../ansible-zuul/ansible-zuul-jobs
  git clone https://opendev.org/zuul/zuul-jobs.git ../ansible-zuul/zuul-jobs

Libvirt

• A working libvirt installation
• Virt-Lightning
• Ensure nested KVM is enabled

  cat /etc/modprobe.d/kvm.conf
  options kvm_intel nested=1 enable_apicv=n
  options kvm ignore_msrs=1

Installation

python3 -menv my_venv
source my_venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

Just use the --help argument:

./run.py --help

For instance, to start a deployment:

./run.py deploy

How to run the community.vmware test-suite

prepare a venv

Prepare and load a virtualenv, install ansible and position yourself in ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/community/vmware/

You should also install some extra dependencies with:

pip install -r requirements.txt -r test-requirements.txt

Adjust the /etc/hosts

Add the following entries in your /etc/hosts:

192.168.123.4 datastore.test datastore
192.168.123.6 esxi1.test esxi1
192.168.123.7 esxi2.test esxi2
192.168.123.8 vcenter.test vcenter

write the configuration for ansible-test

You need to write a configuration file in your collection directory with the lab credentials. e.g:

[DEFAULT]
vcenter_username: administrator@vsphere.local
vcenter_password: QW/B|aEwN*NUQ,~7$Llf
vcenter_hostname: vcenter.test
vmware_validate_certs: false
esxi1_username: zuul
esxi1_hostname: esxi1.test
esxi1_password: 1oaGnT1OxWOPw3456

To know the correct passwords, take a look at the following files:

• /tmp/vcenter/tmp/vcenter_password.txt
• /tmp/vcenter/tmp/esxi_password_zuul.txt

call ansible-test

For here you can call ansible-test with:

VMWARE_TEST_PLATFORM=static ansible-test integration --python 3.9 vmware_dvswitch

Just replace 3.9`` with your actual verison of Python, and vmware_dvswitch`` with the target to run.

Automate all these steps with --run-test true

You can automate all these steps if you pass --run-test true to ./run.sh. In this case, the playbooks/run_test.yaml playbook will be executed at the end of the deployment. You just need to adjust some variables in playbooks/run_test.yaml to match your local set-up.

The nice part of this is that it reproduces the behaviour of the Zuul-CI. And so, simplify the testing/troubleshooting of Zuul's configuration.

Configure govc

govc (https://github.com/vmware/govmomi/blob/master/govc/USAGE.md) is a light CLI too that you can use to browse your vSphere. You can configure it with the following commands (Bash/zsh):

export GOVC_PASSWORD=$(crudini --get /tmp/inventory-vmware_rest 'vmware_rest:vars' 'vcenter_password')
export GOVC_HOST=vcenter.test
export GOVC_USERNAME=administrator@VSPHERE.LOCAL
export GOVC_URL=https://vcenter.test/sdk
export GOVC_INSECURE=1

or with FishShell:

set -x GOVC_PASSWORD (crudini --get /tmp/inventory-vmware_rest 'vmware_rest:vars' 'vcenter_password')
set -x GOVC_HOST vcenter.test
set -x GOVC_USERNAME administrator@VSPHERE.LOCAL
set -x GOVC_URL https://vcenter.test/sdk
set -x GOVC_INSECURE 1