You can bring up VMware vSphere environment using Terraform with third-party vSphere provider.
Install Terraform according to the guide.
Download vSphere plugin for Terraform. Install it, or put into a directory with Terraform binaries or configuration files. The detailed information about this plugin you can find here
Create VMware template for microservices cluster. You will able to change CPU and RAM parameters while provisioning a virtual machine from template with Terraform. It's recommended to disable SELinux. Create user and add public RSA keys for SSH into the $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys.
It is required to have VMware tools in the template, because we need to populate resulting .tfstate file with IP addresses of provisioned machines.
This configuration was tested on CentOS 7.1 x64.
vcenter_server, user and password are the required parameters needed by Terraform to interact with resources in your vSphere.
insecure_connection parameter is reponsible for checking SSL certificates of the vCenter. If you have self-signed certificates it is necessary to set this parameter to false.
.. envvar:: VSPHERE_USER The vSphere username with the necessary permissions.
.. envvar:: VSPHERE_PASSWORD The password of the user.
datacenter is the name of datacenter in your vSphere environment. It is required if the vSphere has several datacenters.
host is the hostname or IP address of ESXi host in the selected datacenter.
pool is the name of resource pool in vSphere. It's an optional parameter.
template is the name of a base VM or template you will deploy you machines from. Should include a path in VM folder hierarchy: folder/subfolder/vm-name
short_name is the prefix that will be used for the new virtual machines.
ssh_user is the username for the further service provisioning. This user has to be in the sudoers group with NOPASSWD option.
ssh_key is the path to the SSH private key.
control_count and worker_count are the number of nodes for specific roles.
consul_dc the name of datacenter for Consul configuration.
You also can change advanced settings in module file terraform/vsphere/main.tf
cpus is the number of CPU sockets in the new VM. By default the same, as base VM
memory is the RAM size in MB. By default the same, as base VM.
configuration_parameters are the custom parameters, for example specific service role.
Once you're all set up with the provider, customize your module, run terraform get to prepare Terraform to provision your cluster, terraform plan to see what will be created, and terraform apply to provision the cluster. At the end of provisioning Terraform will perform commands to change hostnames for correct service work. You can change this behavior in the provisioner section for each resource in the terraform/vsphere/main.tf file.
Afterwards, you can use the instructions in :doc:`getting started <index>` to install Mantl on your new cluster.