Ansible Role: winVMbuilder

Microsoft® provides free Windows virtual machines to allow customers to test their web browsers, which include Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer versions 8 to 11. This VM can be used unrestricted for 90 days.

Because I use Linux every day, I already have a built in hypervisor, KVM. Unfortunately, that isn't one of the platforms for which Microsoft provides a VM...

This role will take some steps to get you a working Windows VM on your Linux system (I am using Fedora). At a high level, this role does the following:

1. Sets up a repo and installs some required packages on the Ansible host
2. Downloads a prebuilt VirtualBox VM from the very generous Microsoft
3. Unpacks, and converts that file to something we can use with KVM
4. Make some changes prior to starting the VM from this image...I sort of consider this cheating because I couldn't get the networking figured out during conversion
5. Fire up the VM, wait for drivers to load, and reboot since it is required

The result is a freshly built and running Windows VM. I have a lot of larger ideas for this role and the VM it creates, but this is it so far...but to this end, the role will add the new VM to an inventory group named allVMs.

Important Notes

• I have only tested this on my Fedora laptop, so YMMV
• This relies a lot on your KVM/libvirt (which I will use synonymously throughout) configuration, make sure that is set up or you'll get really confused. I speak from experience
• Currently this role uses the default storage pool and default network because I felt those were most likely available. Feel free to modify per your specific situation.
• I changed the NIC to use e1000 until I figure out the virtio drivers during conversion...
• Some commands require root so ensure you have ansible set up to account for this
• This is currently developed to be used on a system locally. In order to use it with Tower or AWX will take some refactoring
• The VM boots up and logs in as the IEUser automatically, but so that you don't have to search the internets, the password for that account is: Passw0rd!
• This role is far from idempotent at this point.
• The role will add the newly created VM into a group named allVMs which is cool because subsequent plays can then use hosts: allVMs and it will act on the VM created in this role. Bingo bango.
• There are a lot of factors to determine how long this role will take to run. But be aware that we do a few conversions and I don't clean up the files until the end so make sure you have enough disk space

Requirements

I couldn't escape a few requirements:

• You'll need to have your libvirt environment configured to your liking. I'm working on creating my own preferences in a separate role...to be continued...

Role Variables

• VMurl (optional) a specific VM to install, providing the entire URL as the VMurl variable. If none is specified, it defaults to:

  https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/VMBuild_20180102/VirtualBox/IE11/IE11.Win7.VirtualBox.zip

See the below example which might answer any questions

Example Playbook

Playbook specifying a particular VM (by providing the URL) and utilizing the allVMs group for a subsequent play (note, in order to use Ansible on a Windows system, you've got to jump through some other hoops):

- hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  roles:
    - role: winVMbuilder
      VMurl: "https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/VMBuild_20180102/VirtualBox/IE11/IE11.Win81.VirtualBox.zip"

- hosts: allVMs
  roles:
    - role: do_something_to_the_VM_just_created

Inclusion

• I'm imagining this role as a part of other roles, such as to set up a demo of Ansible. So I have included a fairly generic meta/main.yml file which allows for something similar to:

    ansible-galaxy install -p ./roles -r requirements.yml
  

  with requirements.yml containing:

    ---
    # get the winVMbuilder role from github
    - src: https://github.com/thisdwhitley/ansible-role-winVMbuilder.git
      scm: git
      name: winVMbuilder
  

References

• https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/
• https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/creating-windows-virtual-machines-using-virtio-drivers/
• https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/importing-vms-kvm-virt-v2v

License

Red Hat, the Shadowman logo, Ansible, and Ansible Tower are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

All other parts of this project are made available under the terms of the MIT License.