How to Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot with Ansible?
I’m going to show you a live Playbook and some simple Ansible code. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.
Ansible Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot
community.vmware.vmware_guest_snapshot- Manages virtual machines snapshots in vCenter
Let’s talk about the Ansible module vmware_guest_snapshot.
The full name is community.vmware.vmware_guest_snapshot, which means that is part of the collection of modules to interact with VMware, community-supported.
It manages virtual machine snapshots in vCenter.
Parameters
- hostname string / username string / password string / datacenter string / validate_certs boolean - connection details
- state string - present / absent / revert / remove_all
- remove_children boolean - no/yes
- snapshot_name string description string - Name/description of the virtual machine to work with
- memory_dump boolean - no/yes - memory snapshots take time and resource
The following parameters are useful in order to Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot using the module vmware_guest_snapshot.
First of all, we need to establish the connection with VMware vSphere or VMware vCenter using a plethora of self-explicative parameters: hostname, username, password, datacenter, and validate_certs.
Once the connection is successfully established you could specify the desired snapshot state, in this case, “present” to take a snapshot. You could also revert or remove a snapshot with the same Ansible module.
If you want to remove a snapshot you could also remove all the dependent snapshots using the parameter remove_children.
It’s a good practice to set the name and description of the snapshot using thesnapshot_name and description parameters.
Advanced practice is to create the memory dump of the virtual machines, please note that memory snapshots take time and resources will take a longer time to create.
Default memory dump is disabled but you could enable using memory_dump parameter.
Links
Playbook
How to Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot with Ansible. I’m going to show you how to take a snapshot of the Virtual Machine named “myvm” using Ansible Playbook setting a name and description to easily find in your VMware vCenter.
code
- vm_snapshot_create.yml
---
- name: vm snapshot Playbook
hosts: localhost
become: false
gather_facts: false
collections:
- community.vmware
pre_tasks:
- include_vars: vars.yml
tasks:
- name: create snapshot
vmware_guest_snapshot:
hostname: "{{ vcenter_hostname }}"
username: "{{ vcenter_username }}"
password: "{{ vcenter_password }}"
datacenter: "{{ vcenter_datacenter }}"
validate_certs: "{{ vcenter_validate_certs }}"
name: "{{ vm_name }}"
state: present
snapshot_name: "Ansible Managed Snapshot"
folder: "{{ vm_folder }}"
description: "This snapshot is created by Ansible Playbook"
- vars.yml
---
vcenter_hostname: "vmware.example.com"
vcenter_datacenter: "vmwaredatacenter"
vcenter_validate_certs: false
vcenter_username: "[email protected]"
vcenter_password: "MySecretPassword123"
vm_name: "myvm"
vm_template: "mytemplate"
vm_folder: "myvm"
- inventory
localhost
execution
$ ssh [email protected]
[devops@demo ~]$ cd vmware/
[devops@demo vmware]$ ls
inventory vars.yml vm_deploy_template.yml vm_snapshot_create.yml vm_stop.yml
requirements.yml vm_create.yml vm_info.yml vm_start.yml
[devops@demo vmware]$ ansible-playbook vm_snapshot_create.yml
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit
localhost does not match 'all'
PLAY [vm snapshot Playbook] ***************************************************************************
TASK [include_vars] *******************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [create snapshot] ****************************************************************************
changed: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
localhost : ok=2 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
idempotency
$ ansible-playbook vm_snapshot_create.yml
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit
localhost does not match 'all'
PLAY [vm snapshot Playbook] ***************************************************************************
TASK [include_vars] *******************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [create snapshot] ****************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
localhost : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
before execution
after execution
before execution
after execution
Conclusion
Now you know how to create a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine with Ansible. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, and Website, X (formerly Twitter) to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.
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