Ansible vmware examples. Examples of Creating VMs with Ansible 1.
Ansible vmware examples These modules are maintained by VMware. This collection brings forward the possibility to manage vSphere resources and automate operator tasks. This library interacts with the VMware vSphere API that allows you to manage ESX, ESXi, and vCenter in order to execute some Ansible code. Each lesson summarizes a specific use case for the modern VMware infrastructure and is focused on a single module from the most important parameter, including live demo of Apr 23, 2025 · To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install vmware. Requirements The below requirements are needed on the local controller node that executes Apr 23, 2025 · Individual disk relocation map. This may be clearer for some use cases-name: Pass In Connection 2 days ago · This repository is an example of how to test Ansible roles with Molecule You will find a couple of ansible roles that are already initialized with molecule and are ready for experimenting. folder: /datacenter1/vm. For distributions that do not support a secondary CD-ROM the floppy_content option is used. Apr 23, 2025 · community. Using Ansible to automate VMware snapshot management simplifies the process of querying and filtering snapshots based on specific attributes. vmware_guest has the correct level of privileges. Uses any file which ends with vmware. vmware. vmware collection: Modules . Why: This module has been moved to the new vmware. Sep 29, 2023 · Howdy, I’m tasked with creating an ansible playbook that will generate an inventory our our VCenter. We will cover essential concepts, key Nov 5, 2023 · One way to ensure that your VMware ESXi hosts have a consistent and repeatable configuration; is with the use of Ansible. Sep 12, 2022 · Order NOW my latest book “Ansible For VMware By Examples” edited with Apress and available soon in online and the best bookstore worldwide (estimated date 28th November 2022). vmware collection is part of the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for VMware offering that brings Ansible automation to VMware. local vcenter_password: secret validate_certs: false datacenter: dc # esxi_hostname: change me to esxi Apr 30, 2021 · Ansible provides various modules to manage VMware infrastructure, which includes datacenter, cluster, host system and virtual machine. 15. Status. Want to keep this project going? 2 days ago · Assuming your (local) repository has set origin to your GitHub fork and this repository is added as upstream:. ESX’s datacenter is ha-datacenter. You need further requirements to be able to use this module, see Requirements for details. Consistency: Ensure that tags are applied uniformly across resources. virt module. Jul 18, 2019 · If you have read any of my posts, you will quickly discover that I use Ansible a lot, for deploying virtual machines and VMware OVA appliances, on vSphere. vcenter_extension_info module – Gather info vCenter extensions. Write better code with AI GitHub Advanced Security. Functionality: Dynamically retrieves virtual machines as inventory hosts from the VMware environment. The Packer plugin's cd_content option is used when selecting disk unless the distribution does not support a secondary CD-ROM. vmware_rest Ansible Collection. Containerized Environments: Automate virtualized containers with tools like Kubernetes and Docker. Plugin: community. windows. Sep 12, 2022 · Ansible For VMware By Examples book, authored by Luca Berton, and published by Apress (Springer Nature Information Technology specialist) is going to be released soon in the best libraries and online bookshops. local vcenter_username: administrator@vsphere. It tries to manage more or less everything that you can do to with a VM. vcenter_vm_hardware_disk. Below is a full example of an Ansible playbook Apr 23, 2025 · It is not included in ansible-core. folder: ha-datacenter/vm. 0). Please consider taking a look at the official documentation because it’s an evolving collection. This list isn’t complete, but I would like to give some examples: Creating VMs, cloning from Apr 23, 2025 · It is not included in ansible-core. [ Learn more about integrations between Ansible and VMware infrastructure. vms instead. Dec 3, 2022 · Learn to use the Ansible open source IT automation tool to automate your VMware infrastructure. May 18, 2022 · How to automate taking snapshots named “Ansible Managed Snapshot” to a VMware Virtual Machine “myvm” Ansible Playbook and vmware_guest_snapshot module. Want to keep this project going? May 27, 2022 · Note. yml, vmware. DEPRECATED Removed in: version 7. System programmers can enable pipelines to setup, tear down and Jan 24, 2024 · 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 (Playbook) on target nodes All codes are tested on 2022 against the most modern releases of Ansible and VMware About this book Dec 27, 2024 · Creating an Ansible Playbook for VMware Infrastructure 1. Source codes for the book "Ansible For VMware by Examples" by Luca Berton - Apress/Ansible-For-VMware-by-Examples_Luca-Berton. yaml, vmware_host_inventory. Ansible for VMware by Examples and Ansible for Kubernetes by Example books guide you on Learn to use the Ansible open source IT automation tool to automate your VMware infrastructure. vmware contains modules and plugins packed with a lot of useful automation to perform any tasks and operations in your VMware infrastructure. HTTP Binding¶. Plugins and modules within a collection may be tested with only specific Ansible Apr 23, 2025 · Plugin Index . Every successful IT department needs automation nowadays for bare metal servers, virtual machines, could, containers, and edge computing. Apr 22, 2020 · As a part of my effort to use Infrastructure as Code to define and automate VMware environments, I'm taking a look at Terraform for VMware provisioning. vmware_cluster_ha. Examples: folder: /ha-datacenter/vm. Ansible is a powerful tool to automate task in VMware vSphere, with well explained official documentation for collections and modules and with numerous examples, which makes writing This repo hosts the vmware. Welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot—I’m Luca Berton. vmware_vm_shell – Run commands in a VMware guest operating system Note This plugin is part of the community. community. Buy on Amazon Buy on Apress Subscribe to the YouTube channel , Medium , and Website , X (formerly Twitter) to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot. Please make sure that the user used for community. Alternative: Use vmware. 6. I’ve been able to create a playbook using the Jan 12, 2025 · [vmware] vmware_host ansible_host=your_vmware_host ansible_user=your_username ansible_password=your_password. If you need to define a specific IPv4 address from your host for Packer's built-in May 26, 2021 · Note: Okay for the custom attributes to work you need to get the MOID, UUID & Folder of the vm by using the vm name. If it returns failure, then Ansible moves on to the next plugin in the defined list script which attempts to just call a python script and get a returned JSON structure. DataStore > Allocate Space; Virtual Machine > Configuration > Add New Disk; Virtual Machine > Configuration > Add or Remove Device Apr 23, 2025 · Examples. libvirt. Learn to use the Ansible open source IT automation tool to automate your VMware infrastructure. Learn the Ansible automation technology with some real-life examples. Buy On Apress Buy On Amazon Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, and Website, X (formerly Twitter) to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot. esxi_connection instead. Luca Berton Ansible for VMware by Examples: A Step-by-Step Guide to Automating Your VMware Infrastructure. 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. For general information about Ansible, visit the GitHub project page. vmware_rest. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is managing infrastructure using a DevOps type methodology. vcenter_vm_hardware_cpu. Valid attributes are: Oct 25, 2024 · Note. This hands-on book teaches IT pros to efficiently manage VMware Dec 27, 2024 · In this article, we will walk you through how to create and use Ansible playbooks for VMware infrastructure, helping you automate VMware tasks and streamline management processes. Ansible Automation Platform is well known for automating Linux and Windows operating systems, but it can also automate VMware vSphere itself, allowing you to automate and orchestrate an entire Jan 17, 2025 · community. This example Playbooknstrates configuring a cloud template YAML file to run an Ansible playbook as part of the machine provisioning process. Now what I like to do is set everything up as a role in ansible to call in your playbooks, it keeps things cleaner and its much easier to find spacing mistakes in your code when writin g in yaml. Apr 23, 2025 · To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list. Synopsis Get VMware ESXi hostsystem as inventory hosts from VMware environment. I’m going to show you how to create a Virtual Machine named “myvm” with the following resources: - name: May 11, 2022 · Ansible VMware modules are written on top of pyVmomi. Posted by Rob. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list. vcenter_domain_user_group_info module – Gather user or group information of a domain. If set to present and snapshot present, then no changes are made. win_hyperv_vm module. KVM/Libvirt: Use the community. Here’s an example playbook to create a new virtual Nov 21, 2022 · This repository contains NSX-T Ansible Modules, which one can use with Ansible to work with VMware NSX-T Data Center. Apr 23, 2025 · Destination folder, absolute or relative path to find an existing guest or create the new guest. My book Ansible By Examples: 200+ Automation Examples For Linux and Windows System Administrator and DevOps Donate. VMware HTTP APIs are supported in vCenter 6. For example when you want to get all snapshots that are in state poweredOn you skip the match_type default is exact or you write match_type exact. These are the plugins in the vmware. appliance_access_consolecli_info module – Get enabled state of the console-based controlled CLI (TTY1). To use it in a playbook, Sep 12, 2022 · Ansible For VMware By Examples with Apress book. The vmware. Ansible For VMware By Examples book, authored by Luca Berton and published by Apress (Springer Nature Information Technology specialist), available in the best libraries and online bookshops. vmware Ansible Collection. 0. ; For example, following is the list of minimum privileges required by users to create virtual machines. To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install vmware. Ansible ad-hoc command mode is used to execute the command on the remote ESXi. ios). From the great success of the Ansible Pilot project. Oct 16, 2023 · The examples in this article focus on using Ansible in a VMware environment, but the software can also help manage many other environments. Deploy a virtual machine from a template; Rename an existing virtual machine; Remove an existing VMware virtual machine; Find folder path of an existing VMware virtual machine; Using VMware HTTP API using Ansible; Sample Scenario for Ansible VMware. Sign in Product GitHub Copilot. Examples of Creating VMs with Ansible 1. To use it in a playbook, specify: vmware. Each lesson summarizes a specific use case for the modern VMware infrastructure and is focused on a single module from the most important parameter, including live demo of Aug 6, 2024 · Automating VMware infrastructure with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an extremely common use-case for numerous customers across many different verticals. You can automate the process of taking and removing snapshots of a VMware virtual machine by using an Ansible Playbook and the vmware_guest_snapshot module (see Figure 3-9 for before the execution and Figure 3-10 for after the execution). vmware_guest_custom_attribute_defs module – Manage custom attributes definitions for virtual machine from VMware Note This module is part of the community. Luca Berton Czechia, Czech Dec 20, 2022 · My latest book “Ansible For VMware By Examples” published by Apress is available now in online and the best bookstore worldwide. yml, or vmware_host_inventory. With more than 15 years of experience as a System Administrator, he has strong expertise in Infrastructure Hardening and Automation. vcenter_extension module – Register/deregister vCenter Extensions. Synopsis Get virtual machines as inventory hosts from VMware environment. Ansible support for VMware is constantly growing and in the latest versions, it has become an essential tool that I use as part of my development process for standing up required infrastructure that is easy and Dec 19, 2020 · Setting vmware_guest module on ansible: . vmware collection. For example, any slashes or dashes in the paths will be replaced by underscores in the group names. vcenter_folder module – Manage folders on given Jan 2, 2025 · This repo hosts the vmware. Release Status Expected end of life; 3: Maintained: (for example, cisco. pyVmomi is the Python SDK for the VMware vSphere API that allows user to manage ESX, ESXi, and vCenter infrastructure. Unlock the power of Ansible for VMware automation. Releases and maintenance. VMware virtual machine snapshots are a powerful way to store a Apr 23, 2025 · community. dependency: name: galaxy driver: name: vmware vcenter_hostname: vcsa. Navigation Menu Toggle navigation. (I am using a CentOS 7 template) You must have a working ansible configuration; You must have the proper ansible inventory; A DNS record of vCenter in a DNS server or your local machine ( This will be needed for ansible to work. If you are going to use Pyvmomi based (XMLRPC based) modules then you need to Dec 30, 2024 · Conclusion. Jan 24, 2025 · Benefits of Automating VMware Tags with Ansible. ; Efficiency: Save time with automation rather than manual tagging. vmware The Ansible collection community. Whether you're a developer, systems administrator, or site reliability engineer, this project is designed Jun 20, 2022 · I’ll provide a live Playbook and some simple Ansible code. The playbooks can be run from the Ansible For VMware Course Overview In this course, you will learn how to configure Ansible to interact with VMware infrastructure - data center, cluster, host system, and virtual machine. Requirements Mar 5, 2025 · Packer Examples for VMware vSphere. 3. 5. yml, or vmware_vm_inventory. vmware_tag_manager. 0+) features are using vSphere Automation Python SDK. Dec 11, 2023 · With Ansible, you can run any command against all of your ESXi hosts. vcenter_vmtemplate_libraryitems. Scenario Requirements; Example Description; Conclusion and Where Apr 23, 2025 · Plugin Index . Hyper-V: Use the ansible. # # # # Authentication / Connection Arguments # # You can explicitly set the connection arguments in each lookup. With over 15 years of experience as a System Administrator, he has strong expertise in Infrastructure Hardening and Automation. appliance_access_consolecli module – Set enabled state of the console-based controlled CLI (TTY1). For now, you will be entering credentials in plain text, but in a more advanced playbook this can be abstracted out and stored in a more secure fashion using ansible-vault or . If set to absent and snapshot absent, then no Deleting a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot. Academy. ios. If unset, all disks will migrate to the datastore specified in the datastore field of . vmware_rest collection is part of the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for VMware offering that brings Ansible automation to VMware. Oct 25, 2024 · community. Manages virtual storage area network (vSAN) configuration on VMware vSphere clusters. Please make sure that the user used for vmware_guest has the correct level of privileges. An Ansible playbook requires an inventory file, where you define the hosts and their properties. vmware collection (version 5. IT professionals of every industry who would like a jargon-free understanding of Ansible technology, including VMware, Linux, and Windows Systems Administrators, DevOps professionals, thought le Jan 7, 2021 · This post will take a look at Ansible provisioning VMware with vmware_guest example and see how this can be used to automate virtual Jan 24, 2024 · 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 I'm going to teach you, example by example, how to accomplish the most common IT Professional tasks to automate your VMware Infrastructure Tasks. esxi_hosts instead. jdptechnc • Apr 23, 2025 · If true, groups will be created based on the VMware object’s paths. I also see how trying to use Terraform in your workflow would introduce complications. DataStore > Allocate Space. Return Values. Reply reply More replies. Paths will be sanitized to match Ansible group name standards. Does not work with ‘become’. # Replace these values as needed for your environment. When clients pass a value of this structure as a parameter, the key in the field map must be the id of a resource returned by vmware. If set to absent and snapshot present, then snapshot with the given name is removed. For VMware automation, the hosts will be your VMware vSphere or vCenter instances. Ansible For VMware Course Overview In this course, you will learn how to configure Ansible to interact with VMware infrastructure - data center, cluster, host system, and virtual machine. vmware collection (version 1. Using Ansible for VMware tag management enables efficient, consistent, and scalable Dec 30, 2024 · For VMware users, Ansible provides a collection of modules specifically designed to interact with VMware environments, including vCenter, ESXi hosts, and clusters. Dec 2, 2020 · Ansible for VMware Scenarios. This book contains all of the obvious and not-so-obvious best practices of Ansible automation. Jul 1, 2020 · Prerequisites. 5 and onwards. Manage Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) on VMware vSphere clusters. This repository provides a collection of opinionated examples that demonstrate how you can use both HashiCorp Packer and the Packer Plugin for VMware vSphere (vsphere-iso builder) to automate the creation of virtual machine images for VMware vSphere environments. So, in order to use these playbooks you need to have vCenter version greater than equal to 6. This is required parameter, if name is supplied. Every successful IT department needs automation nowadays for bare metal servers, virtual machines, could, containers, and edge computing. This collection is based upon Apr 23, 2025 · If true, groups will be created based on the VMware object’s paths. I have created an ansible playbook that can be run against a VMware ESXi host to a desired May 12, 2022 · How to create a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine with Ansible. These are the plugins in the community. For example when you want to get all the snapshots that contain in their name the word test you place the filter name test and the match_type includes. Ansible Dynamic Inventory for VMware. vmware_cluster_vsan. appliance_access_dcui Apr 23, 2025 · Indicates whether the filter match should be exact or includes. Lots of NB To aid in checking for mistakes. In this article, I will give a brief intro to Terraform, talk about how it can help in managing your enterprise environments, as well as how it's different than Ansible. folder: ha-datacenter/vm Jul 31, 2024 · Example: vRA Cloud Template with Ansible Integration. Skip to content. Each - Selection from Ansible for VMware by Examples: A Step-by-Step Guide to Automating Your VMware Infrastructure [Book] Oct 27, 2020 · Ansible VMWare playbook examples. Dec 3, 2022 · Published author of the Ansible for VMware by Examples and Ansible for Kubernetes by Examples best-seller of the Ansible By Example(s) practical book series. Set Up Inventory and Authentication. There are complete workflow example modules in the tests/playbooks Jan 27, 2025 · VMware: Use the vmware. Write the Ansible Playbook. Apr 23, 2025 · It is not included in ansible-core. Below is an example of how you can integrate Ansible with VMware vRealize Automation (vRA) by adding an Ansible component to a vRA cloud template. . Prepare the release: Make sure your fork is up to date: git checkout main && git pull && git fetch upstream && git Apr 24, 2025 · The collection includes the VMware modules and plugins supported by Ansible VMware community to help the management of VMware infrastructure. I'll also provide example code and Dec 12, 2023 · Since Ansible utilizes the vmware-tools or openvm-tools service capabilities running in the virtual machine to perform actions, in this use case it will be connecting directly to the guest machine. I need to be able to get the stats like available and used CPU, available and used memory, available and used disk as well as a count of active VMs in each of my clusters. Ansible is an Open Source IT automation tool. guest_info. Apr 24, 2025 · Published author of the Ansible for VMware by Examples and Ansible for Kubernetes by Examples best-seller of the Ansible By Example(s) practical book series and creator of the Ansible Pilot project. This makes it optimal if you want to manage not only your virtualization Nov 5, 2023 · Now that we have VM running Redhat RHEL9 with Ansible, along with the VMware ‘pymomi’ module installed, Here is a sample of what I use, feel free to make adjustments that fit your environment # Add ESXi Hosts that Jan 27, 2023 · Conclusion. You must have a working Linux virtual machine “template” inside vCenter. vmware_vm_info module – Return basic info pertaining to a VMware machine guest Note This module is part of the community. If set to present and snapshot absent, then will create a new snapshot with the given name. To use it in a playbook, specify: community. So we need to gather facts about the vm and the set those facts as variables that we can pass to the next tasks. Each lesson summarizes a specific use case for the modern VMware infrastructure and is focused on a single module from the most important parameter, including live November 4, 2023 Tristan Self Leave a Comment on VMware Ansible – Getting Started Examples. If it does, great, and Ansible stops there. Apr 23, 2025 · Use vmware. – name: get list of facts vmware_guest_facts: hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}” username: “{{ vcenter_username }}” Jun 24, 2022 · How to automate the gathering of UUID of a specific “myvm” VMware vSphere Virtual Machine using Ansible Playbook and vmware_guest_info module. Whether you need to gather information about all snapshots, apply filters for specific VM names or states, or search for snapshots by name pattern, Ansible’s vmware_snapshot_info_all module provides the May 20, 2024 · Ansible for. DEPRECATED. VMware by Examples A Step-by-Step Guide to Automating Your VMware Infrastructure — Luca Berton Ansible for VMware by Examples A Step-by-Step Guide to Automating Your VMware Infrastructure. Apr 23, 2025 · The examples below assume you have a datacenter named 'my_dc' and a host folder structure like path/to/my_folder. Apr 23, 2025 · Destination folder, absolute or relative path to find an existing guest. Unmaintained Ansible versions can contain unfixed security vulnerabilities (CVE). Nov 13, 2024 · In this article, I will be sharing my experience of automating the manual process of provisioning/modifying virtual machines on vCenter using Ansible Playbooks. May 27, 2022 · Use VMware tools to run tasks in, or put/fetch files to guest operating systems running in VMware infrastructure. Using Ansible, you could automate the creation, update, and gather information for data centers, groups, host systems, virtual machines, and many more use cases. A group is created for each step down in the path, with the group from the step above containing subsequent groups. Manage High Availability (HA) on VMware vSphere clusters. yaml as a YAML configuration file. vmware_guest module. vmware_guest is far too complex. esxi_host and vmware. Very easy to use and great for those who doesn’t like PowerShell scripting with PowerCli. vmware_cluster_drs. In addition to the inventory file, you’ll need to define your authentication parameters, Dec 3, 2022 · Ansible By Examples is a practical book series created by Luca Berton to guide DevOps, SRE, and IT professionals to automate the Ansible open-source technology to automate your modern IT infrastructure. For example, following is the list of minimum privileges required by users to create virtual machines. folder: ha-datacenter/vm Dec 2, 2022 · • Ansible collection community. Learn the Ansible automation technology with some real-life examples. Creating an EC2 Instance on AWS Ansible is an Open Source IT automation tool. Requirements ¶ Ansible VMware modules are written on top of pyVmomi . The folder should include the datacenter. Where the current configuration of your infrastructure is represented in code, any additions, changes or deletions are also made through this May 27, 2022 · vmware_guest_network For community users, you are reading an unmaintained version of the Ansible documentation. Dec 20, 2022 · Learn how to use the Ansible open-source IT automation tool to automate your VMware infrastructure. Another advantage using the module is the ability to add resources in a workflow. For example, you might want to know the ESXi version number Mar 6, 2023 · Enabling Ansible inventory host groups to be defined based on VM attributes or properties; Allowing inventory hosts to define VM attributes as Ansible host variables; For example, you can configure a link between Ansible and vCenter by following the steps below. ; Scalability: Manage tags across multiple VMs and datastores effortlessly. vmware_rest collection: Modules . Virtual Machine > Configuration > Add New Disk Nov 9, 2022 · Essentially Ansible will read the inventory file or folder you provided and use host_list plugin first to determine if this plugin understands the file(s) you provided. ; Conclusion. Each of the 20+ lessons Learn to use the Ansible open source IT automation tool to automate your VMware infrastructure. Using Ansible can be a powerful way to maintain or deploy VMWare environments. yaml, vmware_vm_inventory. Not all molecule features are covered with this example project but you will be able to test your role against Jan 20, 2022 · Ansible VMware modules leveraging latest vSphere(6. vmware_vm_inventory 2 days ago · Learn to use the Ansible open source IT automation toolto automate your VMware infrastructure. To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community. Apr 23, 2025 · Manage snapshot(s) attached to a specific virtual machine. Find and fix vulnerabilities Actions In your example, Ansible is calling on VMware automation to deploy the VMs. In case of Windows VMs, set ansible_shell_type to powershell . Apr 16, 2025 · community. But ultimately its experience. pyVmomi is the Python SDK for the VMware vSphere API that allows users to manage ESX, ESXi, and vCenter infrastructure. Synopsis This module can be used to add, reconnect, or remove an ESXi host to or from vCenter. ltza emqdies eku msdrat oasrv ertgs dzcvdm ksjkpccg ohwpujmw dflynyt fulsjz qkmn pjaiims kwud mgnm