ESXi Ubuntu Cloud-Init

This playbook is used to quickly deploy Ubuntu cloud-images and bootstrap the OS using cloud-init manifest on a standalone ESXi host (without vcenter).

Using a cloud image with cloud-init is significantly faster than ISO mount install. In my environment, I can have Ubuntu up and running in under 1 minute.

Important Note

When using ESXi free license the vSphere API is read-only which means this playbook will fail and that totally sucks. So to use this playbook you need to have a trial license or a product key that enables vSphere API. The cheapest option for homelab users is a vMug Advantage subscription which is a pretty good value at $200USD a year.

TLDR

1. Clone this repo
2. update group_vars/all.yaml with your network settings and ESXi IP and login credentials
3. update vars in playbook.yaml
4. run ansible-playbook -i 'localhost' playbook.yaml

How it works

vmWare govc is used to deploy an ova to ESXi. This playbook uses ansible templating engine to generate a script (on your local filesystem not esxi) and then executes it. Also, by using Ansible, configuring vmware tools userdata is greatly simplified.

Be advised this playbook is not idempotent. I may refactor it to use Ansible Pyvmomi module at some point but for now it meets my needs as a tool to rapidly deploy and bootstrap Ubuntu on ESXi.

Requirements

Before you can run this playbook you need to make sure the following software is installed.

• python3
• python3-pip
• ansible (pip install)
• jmespath (pip install)
• netaddr (pip install)
• jq
• govc https://github.com/vmware/govmomi/tree/master/govc (or homebrew on a mac)

Before proceeding make sure pip installed binaries are in your shell's PATH. A quick test is to run simply run ansible -v.

Variables

There are two files that contain playbook variables. group_vars/all.yaml contains variables that are more like constants meaning you shouldn't have to change them after they've been set. The other is in the playbook itself (playbook.yaml) which are variables you set on a playbook run. Variables such as hostname, ip, storage allocation, vcpu, mem, etc.

group_vars/all.yaml

• Ensure keys under local_lan_info match your network configuration.
• Do not change any values with {{ }}. These are Ansible variables which resolved when the playbook runs.
• Update env to match your ESXi configuration. Its likely you only need to change GOVC_URL and GOVC_PASSWORD.
• govc ls cli command is an easy way to find the correct values.
• WARNING: you can use a plain text password for GOVC_PASSWORD but never commit it to public repo. That would be very bad. Very bad.

local_lan_info:
  gateway: 192.168.86.1
  subnet: 255.255.255.0
  nameservers:
    - 192.168.86.3
env:
  GOVC_INSECURE: 1
  GOVC_URL: 192.168.86.101
  GOVC_USERNAME: root
  GOVC_NETWORK: VM Network
  GOVC_RESOURCE_POOL: '*/Resources' 
  GOVC_DATACENTER: ha-datacenter
  # lookup ansible vault password. plain text value works as well
  GOVC_PASSWORD: "{{ lookup('file', 'group_vars/secret.yaml') }}"
  # GOVC_PASSWORD: MyPlainTextPassword
cloud_image:
  '20.04': https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/focal/current/focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.ova
  '21.04': https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/hirsute/release/ubuntu-21.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.ova
  '21.10': https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/impish/current/impish-server-cloudimg-amd64.ova
  '22.04': https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/22.04/release/ubuntu-22.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.ova

Playbook vars (playbook.yaml) are self-explanatory. Note: ubuntu-version maps to values in cloud_image key in group_vars/all.yaml and user_data_file is covered in the next section. The data_disks key is an optional variable used to create and attach additional block devices to the vm. cloud-init-d/ud-docker-data-disk.yaml is a cloud-init that demonstrates how to mount, partition and create filesystem on additional disks.

  vars:
    vmname: docker1
    cpu: 2
    mem: 8192
    disk: 64G
    # dhcp or ip
    ip: dhcp
    # datastore name
    ds: ds-nvme-evo5
    data_disks:
      # optional 
      # docker-data: 20G
    # bios or efi
    firmware: bios
    serial_port: no
    user_data_file: cloud-init-d/ud-docker.yaml
    ubuntu_version: 22.04
    ssh_public_key_file: ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Cloud-Init UserData File

Cloud-init is very cool and this playbook only scratches the surface on what it can do. At a high level, its a declarative way to bootstrap the OS with packages and configure various settings. The following user-data example updates all existing packages, adds docker apt repo, installs docker, installs various apt packages, configures password-less sudo, adds public ssh key, sets group memberships, sets default password of 'password' and forces a reset on the first login. You can find more examples in the cloud-init-d directory.

#cloud-config
apt:
  sources:
    docker:
      arches: amd64
      source: "deb https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $RELEASE stable"
      keyserver: "hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80"
      keyid: 0EBFCD88
package_upgrade: true
packages:
  - docker-ce
  - docker-ce-cli
  - containerd.io
groups:
  - docker
users:
  - default
  - name: ubuntu
    # ssh_key value is resolved at runtime 
    ssh-authorized-keys:
      - "{{ ssh_key }}"
    sudo: ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
    groups: [sudo,docker]
    shell: /bin/bash
ssh_pwauth: True
chpasswd:
  list: |
    ubuntu:password

Common package file

File cloud-init-d/common-packages.yaml contains standard apt packages to install. This list is merged with userdata file specified in the playbook. Use common-packages.yaml for packages that are always installed (jq, tree, etc).

Running the playbook

Now that variables are set and a user_data_file is specified in playbook.yaml you are ready to run the playbook.

ansible-playbook -i 'localhost,' playbook.yaml

If you want to test govc script generation without deploying the ova simply pass an extra var called test_mode with value of true. You can then inspect the generated script in tmp/resolved_script.sh

ansible-playbook -i 'localhost,' playbook.yaml -e test_mode=true

Post deployment

The vm is automatically started. After a few moments the IP address will be displayed in terminal output. Note, its possible cloud-init is still running. To check cloud-init status tail /var/log/cloud-init-output.log.

ssh username@ip_address
sudo tail -f /var/log/cloud-init-output.log

Helpful govc commands

you will need to export govc environment variables. see govc documentation

Tree

govc tree

LS

govc ls 

Open VMRC from CLI

  govc vm.console my-vm
  govc vm.console -capture screen.png my-vm  # screen capture
  govc vm.console -capture - my-vm | display # screen capture to stdout
  open $(govc vm.console my-vm)              # MacOSX VMRC
  open $(govc vm.console -h5 my-vm)          # MacOSX H5
  xdg-open $(govc vm.console my-vm)          # Linux VMRC
  xdg-open $(govc vm.console -h5 my-vm)      # Linux H5

Power off and destroy vm

govc vm.power -off my-vm
govc vm.destroy my-vm