Ansible module for VMware Fusion

Copyright 2015, Keith Sharp keith.sharp@gmail.com, licensed under the GPLv3

This Ansible module provides the ability to create and manage VMware Fusion virtual machines.

Dynamic Inventory

This module contains a dynamic inventory provider that pulls information about the virtual machines on your system from two sources:

1. There is a filesystem search path hardcoded into the top of the file inventory/vm_inventory.py. We search for VMX files under this directory and then parse them to extract information about the virtual machines.

2. We use the vmrun command (path is hardcoded at the top of the inventory/vm_inventory.py file) to list all the running virtual machines on the system and their corresponding VMX files. We parse these VMX files for information about the virtual machines.

Three groups of machines are created:

• allvms which contains all virtual machines on the system no matter what their state.
• stopped which contains all virtual machines that are not running.
• running which contains all virtual machines that are running.

In addition each virtual machine has two variables associated with it:

• state whether the virtual machine is running or stopped.
• vmxfile the full path to the VMX file that defines the virtual machine.

To test the inventor is working first edit the vmrun and vmdirs variables at the top of the inventory/vm_inventory.py file to match you setup, then run the command:

./inventory/vm_inventory.py

This should provide JSON output matching the virtual machines you have configured. You can examine an individual virtual machine with the command:

./inventory/vm_inventory.py --host <machine name>

Virtual Machine Status

This module allows you to start and stop virtual machines. You can test this with the example playbooks provided. To start all virtual machines on your system that are currently in state stopped

ansible-playbook -i ./inventory/vm_inventory.py -M ./module ./playbooks/start-vm.yml

And to stop all virtual machines that are currently running on your system:

ansible-playbook -i ./inventory/vm_inventory.py -M ./module ./playbooks/stop-vm.yml

Within the playbook the key task is:

vm_status: vmxfile="{{ vmxfile }}" state=running headless=yes

There are three variables you can pass to the task:

• vmxfile which is the path to the VMX file describing the virtual machine. Note that you need the quotes in case the path as spaces within it.
• state can be either running or stopped and indicates the desired state you want to put the virtual machine into.
• headless can be either yes or no, and defaults to yes. This determines wether a GUI console is created for the virtual machine and is only relevant when state=running.

Note that the module uses the vmrun command, however due to an issue with global variables in Ansible modules I had to spread references to the command in three different functions. If your VMWare Fusion install is in a non-standard location you will need to change the vmrun command in these three locations.