Create VM with Salt Cloud without profile files
You read everywhere (and especially here) in Salt documentation that you need a profile file to create virtual machines in one of the supported clouds.
I found this approach not to be very dynamic.
It is actually not necessary to have profiles. There is a cloud runner, with a function create, dedicated to creating virtual machines. You can pass VM specifications in a pillar.
Your orchestration state /srv/salt/states/orch_vmware/createvm.sls:
{% from "maps/salt.yaml" import maps_salt with context %}
{% from "maps/proxy.yaml" import maps_proxy with context %}
{% from "maps/resolver.yaml" import maps_resolver with context %}
# Retrieving VM specs
{% set data = salt.pillar.get('event_data') %}
# VM creation
createvm:
salt.runner:
- name: cloud.create
- provider: vmware
- instances: {{ data.post['instances'] }}
- clonefrom: {{ data.post['clonefrom'] }}
- datastore: {{ data.post['datastore'] }}
- num_cpu: {{ data.post['num_cpu'] }}
- memory: {{ data.post['memory'] }}
- datacenter: {{ data.post['datacenter'] }}
- folder: {{ data.post['folder'] }}
- cluster: {{ data.post['cluster'] }}
- ssh_username: {{ data.post['ssh_username'] }}
- password: {{ data.post['password'] }}
- devices:
network:
Network adapter 1:
name: {{ data.post['vlan'] }}
adapter_type: vmxnet3
ip: {{ data.post['ip'] }}
subnet_mask: {{ data.post['subnet_mask'] }}
gateway: {{ data.post['gateway'] }}
switch_type: standard
- domain: {{ maps_resolver['search'] }}
- dns_servers: {{ maps_resolver['dns'] }}
- minion:
master: {{ data.post['master'] }}
- sync_after_install: all
- display_ssh_output: False
- script: bootstrap-salt
- script_args: -H {{ maps_proxy['proxy'] }} stable {{ maps_salt['upstream-version'] }}.{{ maps_salt['upstream-version-patch'] }}
Instead of using the command salt-cloud, we use salt-run like this:
salt-run state.orchestrate orch_vmware.createvm \
pillar="{event_data: {post: {master: 'master', instances: 'vmname', \
clonefrom: 'redhat7', datastore: 'datastore1', num_cpu: 2, memory: 4096, \
datacenter: 'level3', cluster: 'cluster1', vlan: 'VLAN10', ip: '192.168.1.10', \
subnet_mask: '255.255.255.0', gateway: '192.168.1.1', ssh_username: 'root', \
password: 'example'}}}"