kvm_provision_lab
kvm_provision_lab
With this role you can deploy a lab environment of Linux VMs to a KVM/QEMU hypervisor.
For the hypervisor host I have tested but other/newer releases might work too:
- Debian 11
- RHEL 9
- Fedora 37
If you are capable of reading German you'll find a tutorial on my blog at: https://www.my-it-brain.de/wordpress/labor-umgebung-mit-ansible-in-kvm-erstellen/.
Requirements
This role needs the community.libvirt.virt module on the Ansible Control Node and the commands virt-customize, qemu-img and virsh on the remote host.
You can use the command ansible-galaxy collection install community.libvirt to install the collection to your Ansible Control Node. For the commands needed on the remote host, please use the package manager of your distribution to install them.
Role Variables
The following code block shows the variables you can set. You need to specify the directory where the disk images for your guest domains are going to be created using libvirt_pool_dir. With vm_root_pass you set the password for the root user and add an ssh-key to the authorized_keys file by setting ssh_key.
The VMs are defined as a dictionary as shown below.
libvirt_pool_dir: "/var/lib/libvirt/images"
vm_root_pass: "123456"
ssh_key: "/path/to/ssh-pub-key"
guests:
test:
vm_ram_mb: 512
vm_vcpus: 1
vm_iftype: network
vm_net: default
os_type: rhel7
file_type: qcow2
base_image_name: rhel7-template
vm_template: "rhel7-template"
second_hdd: false
second_hdd_size: ""
test2:
vm_ram_mb: 512
vm_vcpus: 1
vm_iftype: network
vm_net: default
os_type: rhel8
file_type: qcow2
base_image_name: rhel8-template
vm_template: "rhel8-template"
second_hdd: true
second_hdd_size: "100M"
With the varialbes from the code block above you would create the two VMs test and test2 with the parameters specified in the dictionary. The variables are explained in the table below.
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
guests |
Name of the dictionary specifying the parameters for guest domains (VMs). |
test |
This key is used as name for the domain (VM) to create. |
vm_ram_mb |
Guest memory in MB. |
vm_vcpus |
Count of vCPU for the domain. |
vm_iftype |
Type of network to connect to. Possible vaules are network (default) or bridge. |
vm_net |
Network Name. Must already exist in your environment. |
os_type |
Type of the guest domain, e.g. rhel8, rhel9 or debian11. |
file_type |
Defaults to qcow2. You usually don't have to change this. |
base_image_name |
The name of the qcow2 image that is used as the source to copy. |
vm_template |
Name of the template without he .xml.j2 part. |
second_hdd |
Boolean to specify whether a second disk image is needed or not. |
second_hdd_size |
Size of the second disk image. Size can be specified in k or K (kilobyte, 1024) M (megabyte, 1024k) and G (gigabyte, 1024M) and T (terabyte, 1024G). |
Dependencies
- community.libvirt
Example Playbook
Including an example of how to use your role (for instance, with variables passed in as parameters) is always nice for users too:
- hosts: servers
roles:
- kvm_provision_lab
Contribution
In case you need additional information on how to use this role, please raise an issue with your question at: https://github.com/Tronde/kvm_provision_lab/issues Pull requests improving this README as well as the role are appreciated.
License
GPL-2.0-or-later
Author Information
Author: Tronde
ansible-galaxy install Tronde/kvm_provision_lab