lab_provision

Description

lab_provision is an Ansible project that provisions and configures virtual machines on RHEL-like hosts using the KVM hyperviser.

This project is heavily enspired from the Build a lab in 36 seconds with Ansible article by Ricardo Gerardi which is based on the Build a lab in five minutes with three simple commands article from Alex Callejas; Reading these projects is recommended to see the evolution tof the concept.

Project Structure

This project is divided to two main parts, which are in turn represented in the 2 Ansible roles

• kvm_provision
• host_configure

---

kvm_provision

This role provisions the guest vms defined in the variable vm_list and ensures the most basic guest connectivity steps.

Role features:

• Provision vm guests
• Adds provisioned vms hostnames to host's /etc/hosts file
• Update known_hosts file (to avoid ssh key fingerprint connection errors)

Role variables:

• iventory/vm_hosts/vars/vm_guests/*
• roles/kvm_provision/defaults/main.yml

---

host_configure

This role performs post-provisioning configuration in vm guests. Please note that most of these steps can be disabled via boolean variables.

Role features:

• Basic configuration:
  • send host's ssh key
  • set keyboard layout
  • send host's /etc/hosts file
  • configure host's command alias in guests
• Package configuration:
  • configure dnf
  • configure redhat subscription if provisioned guests are running RHEL
  • install packages defined in the packages variable
  • Update host
  • Clean obsolete packages
  • Remove RHEL subscription

Role variables:

• iventory/vm_guests/vars/vm_guests/vars
• roles/host_configure/defaults/main.yml