Cluster Builder Control

This packer configuration builds a CentOS 7.6 control station for creating and managing cluster VMware VMs using cluster-builder .

The Cluster Builder Control virtual machine can be deployed directly to ESXi and uses nested VMware hypervisor to build and configure the cluster-builder virtual machines from within the ESXi environment.

Required Software

• Packer 1.5+
• VMware Fusion or Workstation

(All platforms)

Windows Notes

• Packer must be in the PATH. When you download packer there is just an executable which can be placed anywhere.

Eg.

C:\Packer\packer

Ensure that *C:\Packer* is in the PATH.

• Also make sure that Windows Firewall is off, or allow the following:
  • VNC
  • SSH
  • HTTP

Build Instructions for Local CentOS7 Control Station OVA Template

Note that distribution ISO files are kept in the ./iso folder. If the specified iso does not exist, packer will attempt to download it from a supplied URL. However, Packer will not re-use these downloads, and downloads every run, so it is best to download the ISO manually and place it in the ./iso folder.

The current cluster-builder-control station is built using the CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1908.iso

$ packer build cluster-builder-control.json

Once the OVA has been built it can be uploaded to ESXi/vSphere and provisioned accordingly.

General Instructions

The initial login account credentials are:

uid: root
pwd: TempPass2017

uid: admin
pwd: admin

Change them immediately! - you have been warned!

You only need to login to GNOME once to setup VMware Workstation for Linux. See cluster-builder-setup.html in the root of the home directory of the VM admin user for links and hints. It is also a handy way to setup the static IP address and hostname of the control station. After that, and once cluster-builder has been configured it can be used over SSH.

Upon first boot:

Note that the admin account as been setup for passwordless access with the authorized_keys value set, but you must still change the passwords (and/or disable remote login).

• Change the root and admin passwords!
• Assign a static IP (optional).
• Install VMware Workstation for Linux and ensure ovftool is in the path (if not you may need to download seperately)
• Setup a workspace folder and fetch cluster-builder

Note

VS Code has also been pre-installed for easy editing and viewing of the cluster builder source files:

$ cd cluster-builder
$ code .

Direct Remote ESXi Deployment Instructions

Note that this approach is not actively maintained and may require updating.

The cluster builder control station can deploy directly to ESXi. This can be handy if you are running a Windows workstation and/or want to centralize management of your clusters within the ESXi environment.

1. First you must ensure all your ESXi servers have their /etc/ssh/keysroot authorized_keys set for passwordless access.
2. Prep the ESXi servers using the ansible script ansible/esxi-packer.yml. If you don't have ansible to do this, review the steps and execute them manually on the ESXi server(s). The service.xml file is copied for the VNC service definition, which can alternately be included manually.
3. Create or update the cluster-builder-control-remote-options.json file for packer that specifies the following:

Eg.

{
  "remote_host": "esxi-5",
  "remote_datastore": "datastore5",
  "remote_cache_datastore": "datastore5",
  "remote_username": "root",
  "remote_password": "{{ user `remote_password`}}",
  "remote_private_key_file": "/Users/someone/.ssh/id_rsa",
  "vm_name": "cluster-builder-control"
}

Note: You must specify the remote password of the ESXi server as the ovftool does not use passwordless SSH.

If you do use ansible Make sure the ansible/esxi-hosts file is updated with the name(s) of the target ESXi server(s).

Eg.

$ ansible-playbook -i ansible/esxi-hosts ansible/esxi-packer.yml

Then:

$ packer build -var-file remote-options.json -var "remote_password=password" cluster-builder-control-remote.json