Foreman and ESX 5.5 Integration, Rolling out VMs, etc

We're looking into scripting our VM rollouts. There are many tools out
there to choose from, but since I use Puppet internally for OS
configuration management, it may make sense to use a tool that works well
with it.

In this case, I'm looking for some documentation and/or examples about
Foreman integration with VMware. For example, through VMware's CLI, you
can query resources, etc., to determine which cluster (and disk pools) to
deploy a given image. Can Foreman work at that level?

Ideally, it would be great if I could manage the entire lifecycle of the VM
through one interface/API. It's not something I've actually done before,
though we have kickstart.cfg's that populate VMs with basic stuff, Puppet
will be able to take the reins from there and ensure each node has what it
needs, etc.

Thanks.

definitely yes, we use foreman for our complete vm life-cycle.

we are actually using only the api foreman provides for provisioning
our vmware guests (rhel mostly). our internal frontend also creates
entries in various internal systems (configuration mgmt database, dns
database, you name it) and we are quite happy with it.

starting from foreman 1.4 you are able to configure pretty much every
aspect of a vmware guest. this includes:

  • cpu/mem
  • datastore
  • vmware network
  • network card emulation (vmxnet, e1000)
  • scsi emulation (vmware paravirt scsi, lsi)
  • vmware folder

start by setting up a small foreman instance and try to provision some
systems within vmware. you could then try to do the same with hammer
(a cli interface for foreman). maybe using hammer is enough for you, but
if not look at the apiv2 documentation.

the docs found on theforeman.org are very good, which really separates
foreman from other opensource projects :slight_smile:

hth
toni

··· At Wed, 14 May 2014 10:33:17 -0700 (PDT), Forrest wrote: > In this case, I'm looking for some documentation and/or examples about > Foreman integration with VMware. For example, through VMware's CLI, > you can query resources, etc., to determine which cluster (and disk > pools) to deploy a given image. Can Foreman work at that level?


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