LabBuilder

A collection of playbooks and tooling for building labs

About

This project uses ansible to build and configure virtual machines as defined in a lab blueprint. The lab blueprint describes the lab environment's networking and virtual machine topology in ansible inventory yaml format. Blueprints are stored in the inventories folder.

There are two ways to use this library:

1. Write a playbook that calls the roles and tasks to assemble a lab,

2. Write an inventory file that describes a lab and pass it to main.yml

   ansible-playbook -i inventories/lab_mylabblueprint.yml main.yml
   

   or use the makefile shortcut:

   make lab lab_mylabbueprint
   

There are numerous example lab blueprints in the inventories folder.

requirements

ansible 2.17+ ansible-galaxy collections:

• community.vmware
• community.general
• netapp.ontap
• community.proxmox

python libraries

• pyvmomi
• pycdlib
• pywinrm
• netapp-lib
• proxmoxer

Additional packages:

• mtools
• qemu-img / qemu-utils
• xorriso

ESXi host(s) vCenter Server

Usage

---

Using make

1. Install ansible, then make install:

   make install 
   

   Note: this will attempt to install the requirements listed above, but ymmv.

2. Configure your virtualization hosting environment variables in the main vars file:

   make configure
   

3. Add the ISOs and OVAs for components you intend to deploy to the files folder on the ansible controller

4. Select or customize a lab blueprint from the inventories folder, i.e. lab_test.yml

5. Prepare the environment to host the lab blueprint

   make prep lab_test
   

6. Build the lab blueprint

   make lab lab_test
   

Using an alternate config

You can use alternate config files to target different hosting environments. For example you may have one environment hosted on VMware, and another environment hosted on Proxmox.

1. create the config file using the main config as a reference

   cp vars/main.yml vars/altconfig.yml
   make configure config=altconfig
   

2. use the alternate config in the make commands

   make prep lab_test config:altconfig
   make lab lab_test config=altconfig
   
   

Building a portion of a blueprint

You may want to limit the build to only a portion of a blueprint, as shown in these examples:

make lab_test limit=server01
make lab_test config=altconfig limit=server02,router01

Overriding the datastore in the blueprint

You may want to build the VMs in a datastore other than the one specified in the blueprint:

make lab lab_test datastore=datastore1

Printing the inventory graph of a blueprint

You may print a list of VMs included in a blueprint using make graph:

make graph lab_test

Using ansible-playbook

1. Install ansible, then execute the install-requirements.yml playbook:

   ansible-playbook install-requirements.yml 
   

2. Configure your virtualization hosting environment variables in the main vars file:

   vars/main.yml
   

3. Add the ISOs and OVAs for components you intend to deploy to the files folder on the ansible controller

4. Select or customize a lab blueprint from the inventories folder

5. Run the prep.yml playbook to provision any required networking and storage defined in the blueprint

   ansible-playbook prep.yml -i inventories/lab_template.yml
   

6. Run the main.yml playbook to build the lab environment as defined in the blueprint

   ansible-playbook main.yml -i inventories/lab_template.yml
   

using alternate main vars with ansible-playbook

The default vars related to the lab hosting infrastructure are read from vars/main.yml To load an alternate configuration, store an alternate set of vars in vars/<altconfig>.yml and load it at runtime with:

 - -e mainvars=\<altconfig\>.yml

To make this persistent, update this entry in defaults/main.yml:

mainvars: vars/main.yml

Adding ISO and OVA files

The various VM build roles require installation media or OVA files. In some cases these can be downloaded on demand, in other cases they need to be added to the files folder.

ISO files can be prepopulated by copying them into the ISO datastore.
Vendor OVA files need to be staged in the LabBuilder "files" folder.

Installation Sources that will be downloaded as needed:

• pfsense install ISOs
• Windows Install ISOs
• Most linux install ISOs

Installation Sources that need to be added manually:

• RedHat linux ISOs
• VMware ESXi ISO files
• Nested ESXi OVA files
• vCenter OVA files
• NetApp Simulator OVA files
• NetApp ONTAP Select eval OVA files
• NetApp StorageGrid OVA files
• NetApp AIQUM installer files

PVE Notes

Most components can now build on PVE hosts, with the following general exceptions:

• Interconnected Serial ports are not configured on PVE hosts
• Shared virtual disks are not built on PVE hosts

Proxmox Compatibility Status

Component	VMware	Proxmox	Notes
centos	YES	YES
windows	YES	YES
pfsense	YES	YES
ESX	YES	YES
Proxmox	YES	YES
Ubuntu	YES	YES
XCP-NG	YES*	NO	experimental: only 8.2.1 on vmware
Nested ESXi	YES	NO*	PVE: use ESX (iso) instead
AIQUM	YES	YES	Use install_file: (aiqum installer .zip)
OTS Eval	YES	YES
SGWS	YES	NO*	PVE: Install StorageGrid on Linux
VCENTER	YES	YES*	PVE: requires manual ip/stage2 configuration
VSIM	YES	YES*	PVE: HA pairs are rendered as non-ha nodes
OVF	YES	No	Generic OVF deployment is not working on PVE