PVE Remove Guests Playbook

The pve_remove_guests.yml playbook

Thhe pve_remove_guests.yml playbook will remove Guest machines from the PVE cluster. It first provide a list of the matched guest machines and prompt for confirmation before doing anything. It then cleans up entries in the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file on the control node, then stops the guest machines, and finally destroys them.

This provides a quick method of cleaning up one or more guest machines. For example, when a set of VMs were created for running a Kubernetes cluster. Or even to remove all the guest machines on a PVE cluster in order to start with a clean slate.

Set the remove_host_patterns variable to a pattern of host machines to be removed. This value is treated the same as those used by the hosts: keyword in plays and will return a list of matching hosts from inventory. Because this is a destructive operation, remember that the role will first prompt for confirmation of removal and show the matched hosts.

Most commands below use -i lab-minimal because there is no reason to gather facts.

Showcased roles

• cloudcodger.proxmox_client.remove

Prerequisites

• Showcase prerequisites.

Commands

Run the playbook according to one of these examples.

ansible-playbook -i lab-minimal pve_remove_guests.yml -e remove_host_patterns=builder
ansible-playbook -i lab-minimal pve_remove_guests.yml -e remove_host_patterns=name_server,ns_single,ns_split,ns_vm

Running the playbook without setting remove_host_patterns will attempt to remove an empty list and do nothing.

ansible-playbook -i lab-minimal pve_remove_guests.yml

To remove ALL the guest machines from a PVE cluster, select all the CTs and VMs. This is only intended to be done on a small lab and caution must be taken to not destroy production machines.

ansible-playbook -i lab-minimal pve_remove_guests.yml -e remove_host_patterns=proxmox_all_lxc,proxmox_all_qemu

Keep in mind that using a pattern like k0s as an Ansible group that was created from PVE tags requires the lab inventory directory, which has want_facts enabled.

ansible-playbook -i lab pve_remove_guests.yml -e remove_host_patterns=k0s

Otherwise, they can be removed using wildcard patterns, like this.

ansible-playbook -i lab-minimal pve_remove_guests.yml -e remove_host_patterns=ctrl\*,work\*

Playbook

The pve_remove_guests.yml playbook contains a single play.

Stop and Remove play

Roles run:

• cloudcodger.proxmox_client.remove to:
  • remove maching guest machines from the SSH known_hosts file
  • forcefully stop matching guest machines
  • remove the matching guest machines