Terraform NSX-T Provider

This is the repository for the Terraform NSX Provider, which one can use with Terraform to work with VMware NSX-T.

For general information about Terraform, visit the official website and the GitHub project page.

This provider plugin is maintained by a collaboration between VMware and the Terraform team at HashiCorp.

Documentation on the NSX platform can be found at the NSX-T Documentation page

Using the Provider

The current version of this provider requires Terraform v0.10.2 or higher to run.

The VMware supported version of the provider requires NSX version 2.2 onwards and Terraform 0.11.7. The recommended vSphere provider to be used in conjunction with the NSX-T Terraform Provider is 1.3.3 or above.

Note that you need to run terraform init to fetch the provider before deploying. Read about the provider split and other changes to TF v0.10.0 in the official release announcement found here.

Full Provider Documentation

The provider is documented in full on the Terraform website and can be found here. Check the provider documentation for details on entering your connection information and how to get started with writing configuration for vSphere resources.

Controlling the provider version

Note that you can also control the provider version. This requires the use of a provider block in your Terraform configuration if you have not added one already.

The syntax is as follows:

provider "nsxt" {
  version = "~> 1.0"
  ...
}

Version locking uses a pessimistic operator, so this version lock would mean anything within the 1.x namespace, including or after 1.0.0. Read more on provider version control.

Automated Installation (Recommended)

Download and initialization of Terraform providers is with the “terraform init” command. This applies to the NSX-T provider as well. Once the provider block for the NSX-T provider is specified in your .tf file, “terraform init” will detect a need for the provider and download it to your environment. You can list versions of providers installed in your environment by running “terraform version” command:

$ ./terraform version
Terraform v0.11.7
+ provider.nsxt v1.0.0
+ provider.vsphere v1.5.0

Manual Installation

NOTE: Unless you are developing or require a pre-release bugfix or feature, you will want to use the officially released version of the provider (see the section above).

NOTE: Note that if the provider is manually copied to your running folder (rather than fetched with the “terraform init” based on provider block), Terraform is not aware of the version of the provider you’re running. It will appear as “unversioned”:

$ ./terraform version
Terraform v0.11.1
+ provider.nsxt (unversioned)
+ provider.vsphere v1.5.0

Since Terraform has no indication of version, it cannot upgrade in a native way, based on the “version” attribute in provider block. In addition, this may cause difficulties in housekeeping and issue reporting.

Cloning the Project

First, you will want to clone the repository to $GOPATH/src/github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-nsxt:

mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/terraform-providers
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/terraform-providers
git clone git@github.com:terraform-providers/terraform-provider-nsxt

Building and Installing the Provider

After the clone has been completed, you can enter the provider directory and build the provider.

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-nsxt
make 

After the build is complete, if your terraform running folder does not match your GOPATH environment, you need to copy the terraform-provider-nsxt executable to your running folder and re-run terraform init to make terraform aware of your local provider executable.

After this, your project-local .terraform/plugins/ARCH/lock.json (where ARCH matches the architecture of your machine) file should contain a SHA256 sum that matches the local plugin. Run shasum -a 256 on the binary to verify the values match.

Developing the Provider

NOTE: Before you start work on a feature, please make sure to check the issue tracker and existing pull requests to ensure that work is not being duplicated. For further clarification, you can also ask in a new issue.

If you wish to work on the provider, you'll first need Go installed on your machine (version 1.11+ is required). You'll also need to correctly setup a GOPATH, as well as adding $GOPATH/bin to your $PATH.

See Manual Installation for details on building the provider.

Testing the Provider

NOTE: Testing the NSX-T provider is currently a complex operation as it requires having a NSX-T manager endpoint to test against, which should be hosting a standard configuration for a NSX-T cluster.

Configuring Environment Variables

Most of the tests in this provider require a comprehensive list of environment variables to run. See the individual *_test.go files in the nsxt/ directory for more details, in addition to tests_utils.go for details on some tunables that can be used to specify the locations of certain pre-created resources that some tests require.

Running the Acceptance Tests

After this is done, you can run the acceptance tests by running:

$ make testacc

If you want to run against a specific set of tests, run make testacc with the TESTARGS parameter containing the run mask as per below:

make testacc TESTARGS="-run=TestAccResourceNsxtLogicalSwitch"

This following example would run all of the acceptance tests matching TestAccResourceNsxtLogicalSwitch. Change this for the specific tests you want to run.

Interoperability

The following versions of NSX are supported:

• NSX-T 2.2.*
• NSX-T 2.3.*
• NSX-T 2.4.*

Some specific resources may require later versions of NSX-T.

Support

The NSX Terraform provider is now VMware supported as well as community supported. For bugs and feature requests please open a Github Issue and label it appropriately or contact VMware support.

License

Copyright © 2015-2019 VMware, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The NSX Terraform provider is available under MPL2.0 license.