So whether your using cloud or doing in house deploys. Tagging is a used a lot especially in cloud type environments. Which we will cover in later posts.

So a common reason to tag your vm is wanting to have the creation date and the type of server or environment its using, handy for backup solutions & other auditables.

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Pre-requisites: Assumed.

Step by Step:

Note: Okay for the custom attributes to work you need to get the MOID, UUID & Folder of the vm by using the vm name. So we need to gather facts about the vm and the set those facts as variables that we can pass to the next tasks.

 

– name: get list of facts

  vmware_guest_facts:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

    datacenter: “{{ vcenter_dc }}”

    validate_certs: False

  delegate_to: localhost

  ignore_errors: true

register: vm_facts

 

Note: So when we use the vmware_guest_facts module to gather the facts about the vm by register the facts to a variable “vm_facts”, which when you run the playbook with –vvvv will spit out the facst you can pass as indicated below..

       “hw_folder“: “/SysUnix/Testing“,

“hw_guest_full_name“: “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (64-bit)”,

“hw_guest_ha_state“: true,

“hw_guest_id“: “rhel7_64Guest”,

“hw_interfaces“: [

“eth0”

],

“hw_is_template“: false,

“hw_memtotal_mb“: 2048,

“hw_name“: “v-sits-test4”,

“hw_power_status“: “poweredOn“,

“hw_processor_count“: 2,

“hw_product_uuid“: “4226d4e1-6be8-9447-5ced-b037075e2ffd”,

“hw_version“: “vmx-11”,

“instance_uuid“: “50263518-c95b-c3be-5c77-4e1ea69ec295”,

“ipv4”: “192.168.1.29“,

“ipv6”: null,

“module_hw“: true,

        “moid“: “vm-296678”,

“snapshots”: [],

“vimref“: “vim.VirtualMachine:vm-296678”,

“vnc“: {}

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.Note: Now that we have the UUID, MOID, & Folder. We now want to create static variables for UUID, MOID, & folder by using the previous variable we registered as “vm_facts”, and we want to set them as static variables by setting them as facts we can past to the tasks after. As indicated below. Again setting facts is the same as defining variables in bash. Just ansible way to do it.

 

– set_fact:

    vm_uuid: “{{ vm_facts.instance.instance_uuid }}”

– set_fact:

    moid: “{{ vm_facts.instance.moid }}”

– set_fact:

    vm_folder: “{{ vm_facts.instance.hw_folder }}”

 

Note: Now want to use the ansible server date and pass that as a variable so you don’t have to input the date as manual value each time you deploy a new host. So we want to grab the date and setup a static fact and then pass it as its own variable. Like we did above…

– name: Get Date

shell: date +%Y-%m-%d

register: date

  delegate_to: localhost

 

Note: We use shell module to get the date in the format we want, then register the result as the variable {{ date }}. We then set a static fact of the result and create another variable called date with using the result from the above.

– set_fact:

    date: “{{ date.stdout }}”

 

Note: We now want to pass all the fact to the “vmware_guest_custom_attributes” module UUID, MOID, DATE, and Folder indicated as below.

– name: Add multiple virtual machine custom attributes

  vmware_guest_custom_attributes:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

    datacenter: “{{ vcenter_dc }}”

    folder: “{{ vm_folder }}”

    uuid: “{{ vm_facts.instance.instance_uuid }}”

    moid: “{{ vm_facts.instance.moid }}”

state: present

    validate_certs: False

    use_instance_uuid: True

attributes:

– name: Creation Date

value: “{{ date }}”   

# – name: MyAttribute2 – Note: You can add additional attributes if you wish

# value: test2 – Note: You can add additional attributes if you wish

  delegate_to: localhost

register: attributes

 

Note: Okay so depending on which module you use, some require you to gather facts about the vmware categories. This is just incase you need the cateogory_id which is usually derived from using a REST API in json or other method. The “community.vmware.vmware_category_facts”will be able to pull the info and then you can pass it as a variable or a static value. IF YOU NEED, however this is NOT needed. If you use the “vmware_tag_manager” module”

 

– name: Gather facts about tag categories

  community.vmware.vmware_category_facts:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

    validate_certs: no

  delegate_to: localhost

register: all_tag_category_facts

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ok: [v-sits-test4] => {

“changed”: false,

“invocation”: {

“module_args“: {

“hostname”: “vmware.nicktailor.com“,

“password”: “VALUE_SPECIFIED_IN_NO_LOG_PARAMETER”,

“port”: 443,

“protocol”: “https”,

“username”: “admin“,

“validate_certs“: false

}

},

“tag_category_facts“: [

{

“category_associable_types“: [

“VirtualMachine“

],

“category_cardinality“: “SINGLE”,

“category_description“: “VM Type – Clone, Decomm, Dev, Prod, SRM, SLM, Template or Test”,

“category_id“: “urn:vmomi:InventoryServiceCategory:f1024eb4-d7d4-49fe-9725-4dcba39fbe3b:GLOBAL”,

“category_name“: “VMType“,

“category_used_by“: []

},

{

“category_associable_types“: [

“VirtualMachine“

],

“category_cardinality“: “SINGLE”,

“category_description“: “Team or Department”,

“category_id“: “urn:vmomi:InventoryServiceCategory:888a0877-5335-4477-9347-6d8de5b3e60e:GLOBAL”,

“category_name“: “Team/Dept”,

“category_used_by“: []

}

]

}

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Note: Now that we want to create the tag for the vm using the ““vmware_tag_manager” module. The only variable that is passed from outside the defaults at the inventory_hostname level “host_var/nicktest1” is the {{ vm_tag }} Make sure you have this defined for the role to work properly.

 

– name: Add tags to a virtual machine

  vmware_tag_manager:

hostname: ‘{{ vcenter_host }}’

username: ‘{{ vcenter_username }}’

password: ‘{{ vcenter_password }}’

    validate_certs: no

    tag_names:

      – “{{ vm_tag }}” – passed at the host_var/nicktest1

    object_name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

    object_type: VirtualMachine

state: present

  delegate_to: localhost

 

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Run your playbook: from /etc/ansible

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