ESX Integration¶

Preface¶

This topic is a work in progress. I have not made foreman work with ESX server 100% but I wanted to at least copy my notes here for others to hack away at.
Although ESX and ESXi are different products they should be considered identically when it comes to working with the Vmware SDK.
Furthermore, vSphere is almost identical to ESX SDK with the exception that vSphere has additional objects and actions available to choose from when using the SDK.

Requirements¶

1. libvirt 0.8.3+ (not totally sure on this) but I know it doesn't work with 0.8.1
2. ESX, ESXi, vsphere server, VMware Server
3. A CA (Certificate Authority) to sign new certificates (psst, use your puppet CA or other CA you might have)
4. RHEL6 or CentOS6 (not required but its what I use)

Summary¶

1. Install libvirt
2. Create ssl key
3. Sign key with CA cert and CA key
4. Transfers these keys to your ESX or Vsphere server

I tried various versions. The latest has too many dependancies so I stuck with 0.9.1 which is perfect for what I need.
I have compiled some RPMs to make it easier to install but you may need to resolve some additional dependancies.
This shouldn't be too bad if you have the EPEL repo.

http://www.logicminds.biz/rpms/libvirt-0.9.1-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
http://www.logicminds.biz/rpms/libvirt-client-0.9.1-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
http://www.logicminds.biz/rpms/libvirt-devel-0.9.1-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
http://www.logicminds.biz/rpms/libvirt-python-0.9.1-1.el6.x86_64.rpm

You will need to use the following to install all the rpms once downloaded.

yum -y --nogpgcheck localinstall libvirt-* 

 rpm -Uvh libvirt-* 

All of these "ESX" products implement the [[http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vc-sdk/]Vsphere SDK] through Https