Hello all!
Very often, I find myself in the situation where I have to quickly setup a test environment. In my case that usually means that I will quickly setup a:
- VMWare ESXi (nowdays vCenter Hypervisor) virtual machine
- 1GB RAM
- 16GB Disk divided into /, /boot, swap
- Ubuntu Server, 64 bit, 12.04.2 LTS
You might have your own favorite setup, this is mine. The goodies on top of a minimal server installation is:
- vi as the default editor
- luxury items like ksh, zsh
- necessary tools like
I’ve done this so many times by now, that I just cannot bear the thought of doing it again.
Why? Well, doing it by hand is summarised by the following:
- Connect to my office over VPN
- Startup my Windows VM (I am a Mac owner; live with it)
- Startup the vCenter Client
- Right click the proper resource group -> New virtual machine…
- Typical
- Give the VM a decent name
- Choose datastore
- Linux/Ubuntu 64-bit
- Network -> VM Network/VMXNET 3
- 16GB disk
- Modify VM properties
- Choose the CD -> ISO file -> browse, browse (got my own quick install, modified Ubuntu ISO)
- Connect on power-on
- Power on
I mean, that is 14 steps that I could live without. So, I started looking at ways to do this from a terminal window.
To this story, you need to know that my office environment I’ve got the following setup:
-
synology02 - nfs/cifs files, a Synology DS1511+
-
Sharing a handful of nfs filesystems
-
esxi01 - My ESXi 5.something server which hosts all my VM’s
-
2 resource groups - NFSDev, NFSProd
-
2 data stores: NFSDev and NFSProd - nfs mounted datastores located on the synology02
-
guran - my “central” server for more or less all and nothing
In my environment, I can browse my datastores when logged into “guran”, since all my virtual machines are located in the datastores on NFS. Look here:
malu@kmg-guran-0001:/mnt/synology02/files/vmware/datastores $ls -la
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 6 malu malu 4096 2012-10-02 12:49 .
drwxr-xr-t 9 malu malu 4096 2012-12-05 14:58 ..
drwxr-xr-x 19 malu malu 4096 2013-02-19 20:38 dev
drwxr-xr-x 8 malu malu 4096 2013-02-04 18:42 prd
malu@kmg-guran-0001:/mnt/synology02/files/vmware/datastores $ls -la dev
total 76
drwxr-xr-x 19 malu malu 4096 2013-02-19 20:38 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 malu malu 4096 2012-10-02 12:49 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2013-02-04 17:27 jira-v001fry
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2013-01-04 11:11 kmg-buildbox-0001
drwxr-xr-x 2 malu malu 4096 2012-11-24 15:12 kmg-op5-0003
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2013-01-04 11:10 kmg-op5-0004
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2012-12-09 21:56 kmg-sandbox-0005
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2012-12-09 19:49 kmg-sandbox-0005.save
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2013-01-04 11:11 kmg-web-0001
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2013-01-04 11:11 kmg-web-0002
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2012-12-28 13:24 kmg-zenLoadbalancer-0001
drwxr-xr-x 2 malu malu 4096 2013-02-07 14:27 nexenta-v001test
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2013-01-16 16:24 op5-v001test
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2013-01-04 11:10 openstack-v001fry
This is very useful, I must say. The goal for me is to be able to create new virtual machines without even thinking of starting up my Windows machine. I accomplished this by doing the following:
- I created a template.vmx file with the size of the VM I needed (which mounts my specially adapted Ubuntu ISO)
- Replaced all references to the name of the VM (in my case the hostname of the system) with the unique string “XXX_HOST_NAME_XXX”
- Figured out how to use this template properly
The basic recipe in my environment is:
-
Create a new directory in the NFSDev datastore with the same name as the hostname of the new system
-
Create a new host_name.vmx file from the template
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Create a new vmdk for the VM
-
Register the VM in my one and only hypervisor/ESXi
-
Startup the VM
-
If there already is a VM with the same uuid/mac address, tell ESXi that I copied the VM
My template.vmx file looks like this:
.encoding = "UTF-8"
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "8"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge4.functions = "8"
pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge5.functions = "8"
pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge6.functions = "8"
pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge7.functions = "8"
vmci0.present = "TRUE"
hpet0.present = "TRUE"
nvram = "XXX_HOST_NAME_XXX.nvram"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
powerType.powerOff = "default"
powerType.powerOn = "hard"
powerType.suspend = "default"
powerType.reset = "default"
displayName = "XXX_HOST_NAME_XXX"
extendedConfigFile = "XXX_HOST_NAME_XXX.vmxf"
floppy0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.sharedBus = "none"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
memsize = "1024"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "XXX_HOST_NAME_XXX.vmdk"
scsi0:0.deviceType = "scsi-hardDisk"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "/vmfs/volumes/c262ee3b-00d1a1ed/images/kmg-ubuntu-12.04.2.LTS.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
floppy0.startConnected = "FALSE"
floppy0.fileName = ""
floppy0.clientDevice = "TRUE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.networkName = "VM Network"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
chipset.onlineStandby = "FALSE"
guestOS = "ubuntu-64"
uuid.location = "56 4d 5d 9a c5 dc 8e a1-45 76 3d 90 34 83 82 d1"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 5d 9a c5 dc 8e a1-45 76 3d 90 34 83 82 d1"
vc.uuid = "52 75 89 2c 80 59 17 93-b9 0b 33 49 04 8c c8 a3"
snapshot.action = "keep"
sched.cpu.min = "0"
sched.cpu.units = "mhz"
sched.cpu.shares = "normal"
sched.mem.min = "0"
sched.mem.shares = "normal"
Notice all the entries of “XXX_HOST_NAME_XXX”? I picked that string, since it is very unlikely that it is used by VMWare, and it is easy to replace using “sed”.
To make things a bit easier, I first setup my ESXi host to accept my public key to login as root:
ssh root@myESXiHost
vi /etc/ssh/keys-root/authorized_keys
After this, the recipe is easy:
newHostName=testbox-v003fry
templateDir=/mnt/synology02/files/vmware/datastores/dev/template
datastoreDir=/mnt/synology02/files/vmware/datastores/dev
cd $datastoreDir
mkdir $newHostName
cat $templateDir/template.vmx | sed -e 's/XXX_HOST_NAME_XXX/'$newHostName'/' > $datastoreDir/$newHostName/$newHostName.vmx
ssh root@192.168.2.204 vmkfstools -c 16g /vmfs/volumes/NFSDev/$newHostName/$newHostName.vmdk -a lsilogic
vmID=$(ssh root@192.168.2.204 vim-cmd solo/registervm /vmfs/volumes/NFSDev/$newHostName/$newHostName.vmx $newHostName pool0)
#-- turn on VM
ssh root@192.168.2.204 vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on $vmID &
sleep 1
#-- check there is a message and choose 2 (default, moved it)
[ -z "`ssh root@192.168.2.204 vim-cmd vmsvc/message $vmID _vmx1 | grep 'No message'`" ] && ssh root@192.168.2.204 vim-cmd vmsvc/message $vmID _vmx1 2
The ampersand (&) is there after the power.on, as the command will hang if there is already (most likely) a VM with the same uuid (defined in the vmx file) in the system. After this we need to sleep for one second, since there will be no message in the message buffer until the ESXi host realizes the there is a conflict, after which I first check if there is a message. If there is a message, pick it up and tell ESXi to use the default (2 - I copied the VM) alternative.
P.S I found out the “pool0” reference to my NFSDev resource pool by browsing this page: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1114467
cat /etc/vmware/hostd/pools.xml | grep "YOUR-RESOURCE-POOL-NAME" -A1 | grep "" | sed 's///;s/</objID>//g' | sed -e 's/^[[:blank:]]*//;s/[[:blank:]]*$//'
Done. All for today.