TF Import Demo

This repo contains an example of how to import resources in Terraform with the vSphere provider.

The goal is to automatically generate a file with the required import blocks for Terraform to import resources. The import.py is a Python script that communicates with the vCenter API and returns a list of VMs according to a specified filter string.

How to use this

1. Prerequisites

• Python: version 3.13.3 was used for this demo.
• Terraform: version used: 1.11.3

2. Clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/tf-demos/config-import-example.git import-example

3. Update your vCenter API credentials

Update the .env file with the corresponding host, username and password to authenticate to vCenter. Once done, remove the .example from the file name:

cd import-example/python
# Update the .env file accordingly
mv .env.example .env

4. Create a virtual environment and install requirements:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

5. Run the script

This script generates an imported.tf file with the necessary import blocks for Terraform. It retrieves a list of VMs for a specified resource pool in vCenter called "Demo Workloads", you can change that directly in the python code.

And additionally uses a "filter string" that filters the VMs to import according to the name. This parameter must be passed as a command line argument. For example, in this case the filter is database:

python import.py database

Upon successfully running the script, this will generate an imported.tf file inside import-resource.

6. Check the imported resources:

cd ../import-resources
terraform init
terraform plan

7. Use wisely

Once you have imported resources in Terraform you can manage them, modify them, and destroy them.

8. Cleanup

deactivate