Guidelines for VMware module development¶
The Ansible VMware collection (on Galaxy, source code repository) is maintained by the VMware Working Group. For further information see the team community page.
Testing with govcsim¶
Most of the existing modules are covered by functional tests. The tests are located in the test/integration/targets/
.
By default, the tests run against a vCenter API simulator called govcsim. ansible-test
will automatically pull a govcsim container <https://quay.io/repository/ansible/vcenter-test-container> and use it to set-up the test environment.
You can trigger the test of a module manually with the ansible-test
command. For example, to trigger vcenter_folder
tests:
source hacking/env-setup
ansible-test integration --python 3.7 vcenter_folder
govcsim
is handy because it’s much more fast that than a regular test environment. However, it does not
support all the ESXi or vCenter features.
Note
Do not confuse govcsim
with vcsim
. It’s old outdated version of vCenter simulator whereas govcsim is new and written in go lang
Testing with your own infrastructure¶
You can also target a regular VMware environment. This paragraph explains step by step how you can run the test-suite yourself.
Requirements¶
- 2 ESXi hosts (6.5 or 6.7)
with 2 NIC, the second ones should be available for the test
a VCSA host
a NFS server
- Python dependencies:
pyvmomi <https://github.com/vmware/pyvmomi/tree/master/pyVmomi>
requests <https://2.python-requests.org/en/master/>.
If you want to deploy your test environment in a hypervisor, both VMware or Libvirt <https://github.com/goneri/vmware-on-libvirt> work well.
NFS server configuration¶
Your NFS server must expose the following directory structure:
$ tree /srv/share/
/srv/share/
├── isos
│ ├── base.iso
│ ├── centos.iso
│ └── fedora.iso
└── vms
2 directories, 3 files
On a Linux system, you can expose the directory over NFS with the following export file:
$ cat /etc/exports
/srv/share 192.168.122.0/255.255.255.0(rw,anonuid=1000,anongid=1000)
Note
With this configuration all the new files will be owned by the user with the UID and GID 1000/1000. Adjust the configuration to match your user’s UID/GID.
The service can be enabled with:
$ sudo systemctl enable --now nfs-server
Configure your installation¶
Prepare a configuration file that describes your set-up. The file
should be called test/integration/cloud-config-vcenter.ini
and based on
test/lib/ansible_test/config/cloud-config-vcenter.ini.template
. For instance, if you’ve deployed your lab with
vmware-on-libvirt <https://github.com/goneri/vmware-on-libvirt>:
[DEFAULT]
vcenter_username: [email protected]
vcenter_password: !234AaAa56
vcenter_hostname: vcenter.test
vmware_validate_certs: false
esxi1_username: root
esxi1_hostname: esxi1.test
esxi1_password: root
esxi2_username: root
esxi2_hostname: test2.test
esxi2_password: root
If you use an HTTP proxy¶
Support for hosting test infrastructure behind an HTTP proxy is currently in development. See the following pull requests for more information:
ansible-test: vcenter behind an HTTP proxy <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/58208>
pyvmomi: proxy support <https://github.com/vmware/pyvmomi/pull/799>
VMware: add support for HTTP proxy in connection API <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/52936>
Once you have incorporated the code from those PRs, specify the location of the proxy server with the two extra keys:
vmware_proxy_host: esxi1-gw.ws.testing.ansible.com
vmware_proxy_port: 11153
In addition, you may need to adjust the variables of the following file to match the configuration of your lab:
test/integration/targets/prepare_vmware_tests/vars/real_lab.yml
. If you use vmware-on-libvirt <https://github.com/goneri/vmware-on-libvirt> to prepare you lab, you don’t have anything to change.
Run the test-suite¶
Once your configuration is ready, you can trigger a run with the following command:
source hacking/env-setup
VMWARE_TEST_PLATFORM=static ansible-test integration --python 3.7 vmware_host_firewall_manager
vmware_host_firewall_manager
is the name of the module to test.
vmware_guest
is much larger than any other test role and is rather slow. You can enable or disable some of its test playbooks in
test/integration/targets/vmware_guest/defaults/main.yml
.
Unit-test¶
The VMware modules have limited unit-test coverage. You can run the test suite with the following commands:
source hacking/env-setup
ansible-test units --venv --python 3.7 '.*vmware.*'
Code style and best practice¶
datacenter argument with ESXi¶
The datacenter
parameter should not use ha-datacenter
by default. This is because the user may
not realize that Ansible silently targets the wrong data center.
esxi_hostname should not be mandatory¶
Depending upon the functionality provided by ESXi or vCenter, some modules can seamlessly work with both. In this case,
esxi_hostname
parameter should be optional.
if self.is_vcenter():
esxi_hostname = module.params.get('esxi_hostname')
if not esxi_hostname:
self.module.fail_json("esxi_hostname parameter is mandatory")
self.host = self.get_all_host_objs(cluster_name=cluster_name, esxi_host_name=esxi_hostname)[0]
else:
self.host = find_obj(self.content, [vim.HostSystem], None)
if self.host is None:
self.module.fail_json(msg="Failed to find host system.")
Example should use the fully qualified collection name (FQCN)¶
Use FQCN for examples within module documentation For instance, you should use community.vmware.vmware_guest
instead of just
vmware_guest
.
This way, the examples don’t depend on the collections
directive of the
playbook.
Functional tests¶
Writing new tests¶
If you are writing a new collection of integration tests, there are a few VMware-specific things to note beyond the standard Ansible integration testing process.
The test-suite uses a set of common, pre-defined vars located in the test/integration/targets/prepare_vmware_tests/
role.
The resources defined there are automatically created by importing that role at the start of your test:
- import_role:
name: prepare_vmware_tests
vars:
setup_datacenter: true
This will give you a ready to use cluster, datacenter, datastores, folder, switch, dvswitch, ESXi hosts, and VMs.
No need to create too much resources¶
Most of the time, it’s not necessary to use with_items
to create multiple resources. By avoiding it,
you speed up the test execution and you simplify the clean up afterwards.
VM names should be predictable¶
If you need to create a new VM during your test, you can use test_vm1
, test_vm2
or test_vm3
. This
way it will be automatically clean up for you.
Avoid the common boiler plate code in your test playbook¶
From Ansible 2.10, the test suite uses modules_defaults. This module allow us to preinitialize the following default keys of the VMware modules:
hostname
username
password
validate_certs
For example, the following block:
- name: Add a VMware vSwitch
vmware_vswitch:
hostname: '{{ vcenter_hostname }}'
username: '{{ vcenter_username }}'
password: '{{ vcenter_password }}'
validate_certs: 'no'
esxi_hostname: 'esxi1'
switch_name: "boby"
state: present
should be simplified to just:
- name: Add a VMware vSwitch
vmware_vswitch:
esxi_hostname: 'esxi1'
switch_name: "boby"
state: present
Typographic convention¶
Nomenclature¶
We try to enforce the following rules in our documentation:
VMware, not VMWare or vmware
ESXi, not esxi or ESXI
vCenter, not vcenter or VCenter
We also refer to vcsim’s Go implementation with govcsim
. This to avoid any confusion with the outdated implementation.