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
- Testing with your own infrastructure
- Unit-test
- Code style and best practice
- Typographic convention
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_foldergovcsim 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.
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 It's old outdated version of vCenter simulator whereas govcsim is new and written in go lang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 │X X base.iso │X X centos.iso │X X fedora.iso vms 2 directories, 3 filesOn 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)
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: 11153In 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_managervmware_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: trueThis 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: presentshould 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.
Next Previous