CHANGELOG

• Better test coverage
• added poweron-vm, poweroff-vm and destroy-vm subcommands to ‘esx’ script
• Added custom network support to the ‘esx’ script (–vm-network)
• Host.create_vm now supports creating a VM with multiple NICs
• Minor README tweaks

New ‘esx’ sub-commands

Powering on/off existing VMs

esx poweron-vm --user root --password secret --vm-name my-foo-vm my-esx-host

esx poweroff-vm --user root --password secret --vm-name my-foo-vm my-esx-host

Creating a new VM with a custom Network/MAC address

esx create-vm --user root --password secret --name my-foo-vm --disk-file tc.vmdk --poweron --vm-network 'foobar' --mac-address 00:01:02:03:04:05 esx-test-host

Destroying and existing VM (disk files included)

esx destroy-vm --user root --password secret --vm-name my-foo-vm esx-test-host

Related

• Spin up a Boxgrinder meta appliance in ESXi using the ruby esx gem.
• Build a Ubuntu virtual appliance from scratch using the Boxgrinder meta appliance.
• Use the Ubuntu appliance generated to create a new virtual machine in VMWare ESXi.
• Bootstrap the Opscode Chef client in that VM, adding it to your Hosted/Community Chef Server.

• An ESXi hypervisor with SSH enabled and root access.
• An Opscode Hosted Chef Server account or a Community Chef Server available somewhere.
• Opscode chef knife configured and working.
• Ubuntu installed in your laptop/server. Most of the stuff will also work in Fedora or even MacOS X too.

Step 1. Install esx and knife-esx rubygems

$ sudo apt-get install ruby rubygems ruby-dev libxml2-dev \
            libxslt-dev build-essential git

$ sudo gem install knife-esx

Step 2. Spin up a Boxgrinder meta appliance

$ wget http://download.frameos.org/appliances/boxgrinder-meta-ubuntu-oneiric-amd64.vmdk

$ esx create-vm --user root --password secret \
                --name boxgrinder-meta-vm  \
                --disk-file boxgrinder-meta-ubuntu-oneiric-amd64.vmdk \
                --datastore datastore1 \
                --memory 1024 \
                --poweron \
                  esx-test-host

This command will upload the Boxgrinder VMDK to the ESXi server (esx-test-host in my case) datastore1 using SCP. A new VM named boxgrinder-meta-vm is created with one virtual NIC and 1024 MB of RAM. After that, the guest is powered on and gets an IP address from a DHCP server (the Boxgrinder meta-appliance NIC is preconfigured to get the IP dynamically, via DHCP) available in our LAN.

$ knife esx vm list --esx-host esx-test-host \
                    --esx-user root --esx-password secret
WARNING: No knife configuration file found
Connecting to ESX host esx-test-host...
+----------------------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+
| NAME                       | IPADDR       | POWER_STATE | VMW_TOOLS |
+----------------------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+
| ESXi QA1                   |              | poweredOn   | false     |
| ESXi QA2                   |              | poweredOn   | false     |
| boxgrinder-meta-vm         | 10.60.20.201 | poweredOn   | true      |
 +----------------------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+

Step 3. Create a Ubuntu appliance with vmware-tools installed

$ ssh root@my-box-grinder  (root password is boxgrinder)

$ git clone http://github.com/rubiojr/boxgrinder-appliances

$ cd boxgrinder-appliances/ubuntu-jeos

$ boxgrinder-build -p vmware --platform-config type:personal,thin_disk:true \
                   -l boxgrinder-ubuntu-plugin oneiric-with-vmware-tools.appl

Step 4. Spin up a VM using the recently created Ubuntu appliance

$ cd chef-repo
$ knife esx vm create \
               --template-file ~/.chef/bootstrap/ubuntu11.10-gems.erb \
               --vm-disk /home/rubiojr/tmp/ubuntu-oneiric.vmdk \
               --vm-name ubuntu-oneiric-chef \
               --datastore datastore1 \
               --esx-host esx-test-host \
               --ssh-user ubuntu \
               --ssh-password ubuntu \
               --esx-password temporal

1. The ubuntu-oneiric.vmdk is uploaded to the ESX host (esx-test-host).
2. A new VM is created using that VMDK (in datastore1) as the VM disk.
3. The VM is powered on.
4. knife-esx waits for the VM to get an IP (via DHCP in my case) and uses the ubuntu11.10-gems.erb bootstrap template (which is a typical knife bootstrap template) to bootstrap (via SSH) the chef client inside the VM.
5. Finally the chef-client is run to register itself in your chef server.

Links to the relevant stuff

• Boxgrinder appliance builder: boxgrinder.org
• The knife-esx gem: github.com/rubiojr/knife-esx
• The esx gem: github.com/rubiojr/esx
• Opscode Chef documentation: wiki.opscode.org

rpm -Uvh http://rbel.co/rbel6

yum install rubygems parted e2fsprogs ruby-libguestfs \
            febootstrap rsync wget util-linux yum-utils \
            ruby-devel gcc make libxml2-devel libxslt-devel \
            appliance-tools git rpmdevtools createrepo \
            guestfish

1. Edit the header of the script and change user, password, etc.
2. Save the email as a text file (usually right click -> save as.. in your mail client).
3. Run “email2ticket emailmsg.txt” where emailmsg.txt is the email you just saved.