Add support for vmware

[generalconsensus]

Is there any interest in providing support for vmware?

[mitchellh]

We would love to. I'm going to tag this for now as a TODO.

[lmello]

+1 it would be great to havê support for vcloud or vcac6 API

[sinelaw]

+1

[tkak]

+1

[jcaxmacher]

+1

[errordeveloper]

FYI, there is an official Go library.

[c4milo]

There is also https://github.com/cloudescape/govsphere, so you have options :)

[astrostl]

Big +1 here!

[simonvc]

+1 We'd love to use terraform to launch instances on our vCloud Director private cloud..

[TheOpsMgr]

Is anyone actively working on this now, does anyone know?

[rickard-von-essen]

Just found this with some hint about a terraform vCloud provider under development
https://github.com/frapposelli/govcloudair

[bitwisekaizen]

@mitchellh My company is interested in helping to contribute a VMware vSphere Terraform plugin. Is there anyone actively working on this issue? If not, we'd love to partner up with you guys.

[rickard-von-essen]

@gavingray I just started to look into building a plugin for Packer and eventually Terraform for vCloud Director/Air using govcloud. I guess vSphere will be a different plugin but I would like to follow your WIP and maybe have some discussion about nomenclature (naming).

[terraboops]

I thought Packer already had a VMWare plugin? Would this be a post-processor for vCloud?

[soniah]

+1

[tinfoil-globe]

+1

[knuckolls]

FYI this official golang client library from vmware is likely the way to go when an eventual vSphere plugin gets built. I say that fully realizing that it may be me that builds it if no one has started in on one by the time I need it. @gavingray did your team start in on one already?

https://github.com/vmware/govmomi

edit: looks like this library was linked above. still curious if anyone has started in on it.

[bitwisekaizen]

@knuckolls Just made my first contribution to govmomi today to understand the code there a bit better. My guess is that we're going to start working on the terraform provider in the next couple weeks. When are you looking to start work on it and what kinds of resources are you looking to manage with your provider? Would be happy to collaborate!

[knuckolls]

We'd mostly be replicating very basic ec2 functionality to begin with. Instance creation, instance flavors (m1.small, etc), and image registration. Not sure when we're going to fire the gun on starting any work but if any of what you're hoping to build overlaps we could do a hangout or a call at some point to at least talk it through.

[ajlanghorn]

We wrote vCloud Tools for doing automated provisioning in VMware vCloud, with the vCloud Director API. You can read about it on our blog.

This isn't the same as a Terraform provider, and nor do I intend this comment to suggest that it is, but it might help some of you in the meantime to get some config-based (it's all YAML, yay!) provisioning stuff for vCloud.

[isharov]

+1

[zarry]

+1

[mkuzmin]

I've started developing such plugin, here is the first version:
https://github.com/mkuzmin/terraform-vsphere
I doesn't do much so far, but VM creation (cloning) and deletion are supported.

Feedback, issues and pull requests are welcome!

[higebu]

@mkuzmin
Cool!

[daniellockard]

I've started work on such a plugin as well... Here's my first version:
https://github.com/Banno/terraform-provider-vsphere

It supports instance creation from a template, static / DHCP IP Address, and other features of Guest Customizations in VMWare. It utilizes govmomi to talk to VSphere.

My current use case is: create a virtualbox vm with my (not yet released) packer-post-processer-vsphere. From there, I use terraform to create a VM off of what packer has uploaded. This uses a lot of defaults like default DC / Resource Pool and the default network that is marked in the vmware template. It also just plops the VM in the root of the VMFolder.

Maybe we should figure out how to merge the two of these, or get one included as an official terraform builtin?

Any thoughts @mitchellh @armon?

[bitwisekaizen]

I, too, have started work on this plugin. My needs are a bit different since I'm creating testbeds consisting of multiple ESX hosts. I've been trying to get some PRs into govmomi to support the changes, but I will post my fork and update this issue as soon as everything is working. Would love to merge all three of our efforts into the terraform mainline so that there aren't three separate forks!

[daniellockard]

I also just open sourced my packer vsphere template creator which sort of goes hand-in-hand with my terraform provider: https://github.com/Banno/packer-post-processor-vsphere-ova

[tkak]

I have started developing this plugin, too. Now, it's in just company's private git repository. But, I'm thinking about releasing our "terraform-provider-vsphere" on Github, or making PR. I'd love to merge the all plugins for vsphere to one terraform provider. :)

[terraboops]

This thread is full of win. You all rock.

[echohack]

+1 💃

[EliasGabrielsson]

+1

[palmamartin]

+1

[marcecaro]

+1

[dhoer]

+1

[alanplatt]

+1

[coxley]

👍

[fulloflilies]

+1

[lamdor]

Just a note that we're in the process of changing our infra to use https://github.com/rakutentech/terraform-provider-vsphere instead of the one we made: https://github.com/Banno/terraform-provider-vsphere. It mainly was done for the better device support, but the rakutentech provider has much better momentum behind it. We'll be deprecating our own soon.

[chrislovecnm]

Bunch of comments here. Hashicorp peeps do we have a roadmapped direction here?

There are a bunch of directions that this could take.

Lowest api - vSphere
Next size - vRealize Automation (formerly vCloud Automation Center)
Another entry - vCloud Air. vCloud 5.5 is kinda going away on the roadmap. I will check with my VMware peeps on what the official pitch is.

I know that folks have worked on multiple providers, but what is the long term direction?? We have three different API entry points to do the same darn thing :)

@mitchellh any roadmap on your guys end?

[ringods]

@chrislovecnm I would definitely try to go as far as possible with the vSphere API. I know of a lot of people who are running a single vSphere (formerly ESXi) server at home (I'm one of them) and would very much like to use Terraform agains this setup.

[chrislovecnm]

@ringods I agree with that starting point. vRealize is another product from VMware, and is not owned by all vSphere users. vCloud Air is yet another entry point. Looking to see if I can get an opinion from @mitchellh or other Hashicorp peeps on roadmap direction.

[dhoer]

+1 for vSphere

[zrml]

+1 on this one.

vSphere: imperative if we want to be present in the Enterprise arena (where you, Hashicorp, can up-sale Atlas and pay back your wonderful investors).

I echo @chrislovecnm:
@mitchellh we don't need it "yesterday", but roadmap is fundamental.

Thank you :-)

[josephholsten]

Seems that if we want an official vsphere provider, we probably need to pick one:

• https://github.com/rakutentech/terraform-provider-vsphere
• https://github.com/mkuzmin/terraform-vsphere
• https://github.com/mevansam/terraform-provider-vsphere
• https://github.com/Banno/terraform-provider-vsphere (deprecated in favor of rakutentech)

@mevansam, @mkuzmin, @tkak: Would any of you be interested in putting together a patch pulling your provider into the main source tree?

[chrislovecnm]

@tkak added a pull, and we are bringing it in!!!!! To let everyone know meetings will soon be under way to start to look at a roadmap.

We (mantl.io) guys are setting a lab with vSphere 6. This is going to rock!!

I really need a roll call of all of the companies that are really interested in this. I can pass it on to a couple of the C levels that are spending budget on this push.

[zrml]

@chrislovecnm all Enterprise playing companies :)
Public cloud is nice but hybrid is here to stay as stats shows.

[chrislovecnm]

@zrml I completely agree, I was looking for some company names that are using terraform and looking for this support. No worries.

[zrml]

@chrislovecnm we are not yet... so, sorry.

[dotnetdude]

+1

[apparentlymart]

A vSphere provider was contributed in #3419 and is now merged, so I think this is done aside from some docs outstanding in #3483.

I'm going to close this but please let me know if there's something in this ticket that isn't represented by that merge, and we can either reopen it or make a fresh ticket.

[ghost]

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