VMware vSphere Provider

The VMware vSphere provider is used to interact with the resources supported by VMware vSphere. The provider needs to be configured with the proper credentials before it can be used.

Use the navigation to the left to read about the available resources.

~> NOTE: The VMware vSphere Provider currently represents initial support and therefore may undergo significant changes as the community improves it. This provider at this time only supports IPv4 addresses on virtual machines.

Example Usage

# Configure the VMware vSphere Provider
provider "vsphere" {
  user           = "${var.vsphere_user}"
  password       = "${var.vsphere_password}"
  vsphere_server = "${var.vsphere_server}"
}

# Create a folder
resource "vsphere_folder" "frontend" {
  path = "frontend"
}

# Create a file
resource "vsphere_file" "ubuntu_disk" {
  datastore = "local"
  source_file = "/home/ubuntu/my_disks/custom_ubuntu.vmdk"
  destination_file = "/my_path/disks/custom_ubuntu.vmdk"
}

# Create a disk image
resource "vsphere_virtual_disk" "extraStorage" {
    size = 2
    vmdk_path = "myDisk.vmdk"
    datacenter = "Datacenter"
    datastore = "local"
}

# Create a virtual machine within the folder
resource "vsphere_virtual_machine" "web" {
  name   = "terraform-web"
  folder = "${vsphere_folder.frontend.path}"
  vcpu   = 2
  memory = 4096

  network_interface {
    label = "VM Network"
  }

  disk {
    template = "centos-7"
  }
}

Argument Reference

The following arguments are used to configure the VMware vSphere Provider:

• user - (Required) This is the username for vSphere API operations. Can also be specified with the VSPHERE_USER environment variable.
• password - (Required) This is the password for vSphere API operations. Can also be specified with the VSPHERE_PASSWORD environment variable.
• vsphere_server - (Required) This is the vCenter server name for vSphere API operations. Can also be specified with the VSPHERE_SERVER environment variable.
• allow_unverified_ssl - (Optional) Boolean that can be set to true to disable SSL certificate verification. This should be used with care as it could allow an attacker to intercept your auth token. If omitted, default value is false. Can also be specified with the VSPHERE_ALLOW_UNVERIFIED_SSL environment variable.
• client_debug - (Optional) Boolean to set the govomomi api to log soap calls to disk. The log files are logged to ${HOME}/.govc, the same path used by govc. Can also be specified with the VSPHERE_CLIENT_DEBUG environment variable.
• client_debug_path - (Optional) Override the default log path. Can also be specified with the VSPHERE_CLIENT_DEBUG_PATH environment variable.
• client_debug_path_run - (Optional) Client debug file path for a single run. Can also be specified with the VSPHERE_CLIENT_DEBUG_PATH_RUN environment variable.

Required Privileges

In order to use Terraform provider as non priviledged user, a Role within vCenter must be assigned the following privileges:

• Datastore
  • Allocate space
  • Browse datastore
  • Low level file operations
  • Remove file
  • Update virtual machine files
  • Update virtual machine metadata
• Folder (all)
  • Create folder
  • Delete folder
  • Move folder
  • Rename folder
• Network
  • Assign network
• Resource
  • Apply recommendation
  • Assign virtual machine to resource pool
• Virtual Machine
  • Configuration (all) - for now
  • Guest Operations (all) - for now
  • Interaction (all)
  • Inventory (all)
  • Provisioning (all)

These settings were tested with vSphere 6.0 and vSphere 5.5. For additional information on roles and permissions, please refer to official VMware documentation.

Virtual Machine Customization

Guest Operating Systems can be configured using customizations, in order to set things properties such as domain and hostname. This mechanism is not compatible with all operating systems, however. A list of compatible operating systems can be found here

If customization is attempted on an operating system which is not supported, Terraform will create the virtual machine, but fail with the following error message:

Customization of the guest operating system 'debian6_64Guest' is not
supported in this configuration. Microsoft Vista (TM) and Linux guests with
Logical Volume Manager are supported only for recent ESX host and VMware Tools
versions. Refer to vCenter documentation for supported configurations.  ```

In order to skip the customization step for unsupported operating systems, use the skip_customization argument on the virtual machine resource.

Acceptance Tests

The VMware vSphere provider’s acceptance tests require the above provider configuration fields to be set using the documented environment variables.

In addition, the following environment variables are used in tests, and must be set to valid values for your VMware vSphere environment:

• VSPHERE_IPV4_GATEWAY
• VSPHERE_IPV4_ADDRESS
• VSPHERE_IPV6_GATEWAY
• VSPHERE_IPV6_ADDRESS
• VSPHERE_NETWORK_LABEL
• VSPHERE_NETWORK_LABEL_DHCP
• VSPHERE_TEMPLATE
• VSPHERE_MAC_ADDRESS

The following environment variables depend on your vSphere environment:

• VSPHERE_DATACENTER
• VSPHERE_CLUSTER
• VSPHERE_RESOURCE_POOL
• VSPHERE_DATASTORE

The following additional environment variables are needed for running the “Mount ISO as CDROM media” acceptance tests.

• VSPHERE_CDROM_DATASTORE
• VSPHERE_CDROM_PATH

These are used to set and verify attributes on the vsphere_virtual_machine resource in tests.

Once all these variables are in place, the tests can be run like this:

make testacc TEST=./builtin/providers/vsphere

See the source of this document at Terraform.io