Ansible Role : VMINSTALLER

This ansible role is for installing virtual machines using ansible with libvirt.

The role presumes you have an hypervisor running Linux with KVM and Libvirt. It uses virt-install to execute the installation of the VM. The role can deply to multiple architectures and distributions.

Variable Listing

The list of the variables that are used :

• hyper (required)
  • The hypervisor the virtual machine will run on, this variable is the ansible host name as in the host file
• distro (required)
  • The distribution name that the virtual machine need to be installed with
• machinearch (required)
  • The machine architecture to use for the virtual machine
• machinetype (optional) [ the machinetype used by qemu ]
  • The machine type of the virtual machine and refers to the machine type qemu will use, if none is given the default machine type will be used
• virtualcputype (optional) [ whatever qemu can use ]
  • The cpu emulation type of the virtual machine that qemu can virtualize, if none is given the default qemu cputype is used
• virtualcpus (required)
  • The number of vcpus to assing to the virtual machine (or the multiple of virtualsockets x virtualcores x virtualthreads)
• virtualsockets (optional) [required if virtualcores and virtualthreads is used]
  • The number of sockets that the vcpus use
• virtualcores (optional) [required if virtualcores and virtualthreads is used]
  • The number of cores the vcpu has per socket
• virtualthreads (optional) [required if virtualcores and virtualthreads is used]
  • The number of threads a vcpu core has
• ramsize (required)
  • The total RAM size of the virtual machine
• vmwaittime (required)
  • The time to wait before polling if the virtual machine has completed installation
• language (required)
  • The language the virtual machine wil be installed in
• keyboard (required)
  • The keyboard of the virtual machine
• timezone (required)
  • The timezone of the virtual machine
• rootpwd (required) [ password that goes into the autoinstall file ]
  • The root password of the virtual machine
• sshdrsakeylength (required) [RHEL][CENTOS][SCIENTIFIC][POWEREL][UBUNTU][DEBIAN]
  • The ssh rsa key length to regenerate
• sshdecdsakeylength (required) [RHEL][CENTOS][SCIENTIFIC][POWEREL][UBUNTU][DEBIAN]
  • The ssh ecdsa key length to regenerate
• locale (required)
  • The locale setting of the virtual machine
• virtualfilespath (required)
  • The path used to store any temporary files
• nics (required) [ each line is a nic in the guest with the link on the hypervisor ] { type: (required) , name: (required) , model: (required) , device: (required) , onboot: (required) , bootproto: (required) , ip: (required) , netmask: (required) , gateway: (required) , route: (required) , nameserver: (required) , network (optional) , broadcast: (optional) , mtu: (optional) }
  • The mapping of physical and virtual networking with all networking information for the networking card in the virtual machine
• kickstartdevice (optional) [RHEL][CENTOS][SCIENTIFIC][POWEREL]
  • The network interface in the virtual machine to use for kickstarting the system
• preseednic (optional) [UBUNTU][DEBIAN]
  • The network interface in the virtual machine to use for preseed the system
• autoinstallnic (required) [OPENBSD]
  • The network interface in the virtual machine to use to run the autoinstall script
• hostname (required)
  • The hostname of the virtual machine
• disks { path: (required) , size: (required) , }
  • The disks that need to be created
• iscsi (optional) [ creates iscsi initiator lun's for use in the installation process ] { iqnname: (required) , server: (required) , username: (required) , password: (required) }
  • The iscsi disk to setup in the virtual machine
• iscsinic (required)
  • The network controller to use for the iscsi connection
• partitions (required) [RHEL][CENTOS][SCIENTIFIC][POWEREL][UBUNTU][DEBIAN]
  • The partition as the installer wants them seperate per line, on Red Hat based systems, kickstart partitions line, on Debian based systems preseed partitions line
• bootloader (required) [RHEL][CENTOS][SCIENTIFIC][POWEREL]
  • The bootloader kickstart line that is required to install the bootloader of the installation, eg : "bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=vda,vdb,vdc"
• bootpartition (required) [UBUNTU][DEBIAN]
  • The device name of the MBR device
• python_version (optional) [OPENBSD]
  • The python version to install so we can use ansible modules
• users (optional) { name: (required) , id: (required) , sshpubkey: (required) )
  • The users to be created on the virtual machine, this is actually used by another role, but has been added here for future usage
• webserver (required) [UBUNTU][DEBIAN]
  • The webserver name to be used for post-preseed commands as listed in the inventory
• webpath (required) [UBUNTU][DEBIAN]
  • The path on the webserver where to place the post-preseed file
• weburl (required) [UBUNTU][DEBIAN]
  • The url that the new vm can use to get the post-preseed file from the webserver
• webuser (required) [UBUNTU][DEBIAN]
  • The user on the webserver that has access to the folder and that the webserver deamon can read from

Examples

See the example folder

• Red Hat, CentOS, Scientific Linux, Oracle Unbreackable, PowerEL - version 7
  • examples/el7
• Ubuntu based distribution LTS 14.04, 16.04
  • examples/ubuntu
• OpenBSD based distribution 5.7 or higher
  • examples/openbsd

Dependencies

• Ansible (on the management node)
• Libvirt with python modules including the virt-install tool
• Access to the Linux Distribution Repositories (on the hypervisor)
• qemu-img module for ansible

Architectures

The role is currently supported for :

• x86_64
• powerpc (ppc64,ppc64le,ppc64el,powerpc)

Distributions

Currently working distributions that have been tested (in a limited capacity):

• CentOS

  • CentOS7
  • CentOS6

• Red Hat

  • RHEL7
  • RHEL6

• PowerEL

  • PEL7

• Scientific Linux

  • SL7
  • SL6

• Debian :

  • debian8
  • debian7

• Ubuntu :

  • ubuntu 16.04 lts
  • ubuntu 14.04 lts

• OpenBSD

  • from 5.7 using autoinstall

• MS Windows

  • WinSrv2012(r2)
  • WinSrv2008(r2)

Work In Progress

The role is being worked on for the following distros :

• FreeBSD (works in some cases)
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows 7 Pro / Windows 10 Pro (VDI, requires better graphics support)

Authors

• Toshaan Bharvani - toshaan@vantosh.com - (http://www.vantosh.com)