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Use Terraform to deploy hundreds of full clone desktops in VMC on AWS

This blog will explain how to leverage Terraform to deploy hunderts of desktops to use them afterwards in Horizon as a Manual Desktop Pool.

First step is to install Terraform. Download Terraform from https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html Terraform is distributed as a single binary. Install Terraform by unzipping it and moving it to a directory included in your system’s. Once the download is finish

1. Unzip
2. Copy binary to a place in the path such as /usr/local/bin
3. cp $HOME/Downloads/terraform /usr/local/bin/
4. Verify installation terraform -v

Now that terraform is working let’s create a working directory where we can safe our configuration file, our provider and variable files. I used my Desktop for example purpose. I use Visual Studio and have installed the Terraform plugin. Switch to your working directory in the terminal. Create a simple first provider file and safe it into your working directory as provider-vsphere.tf

provider-vsphere.tf

# Configure the VMware vSphere Provider
provider "vsphere" {
 user = "${var.vsphere_user}"
 password = "${var.vsphere_password}"
 vsphere_server = "${var.vsphere_server}"
# if you have a self-signed cert
allow_unverified_ssl = true
}

Run the terraform init command for a new configuration — or after checking out an existing configuration from version control — which initializes various local settings and data that will be used by subsequent commands. Terraform uses a plugin based architecture to support the numerous infrastructure and service providers available. The terraform init command will automatically download and install any Provider binary for the providers in use within the configuration, which in this case is just the vsphere provider:

Since we are working with variables for the vcenter server , vsphere user and password we need to create additional files. Safe those files in your working directory.

Vars.tf

variable "vsphere_user" {}
variable "vsphere_password" {}
variable "vsphere_server" {}
variable "euconvmc" {}

variable "name_prefix" {
   default = "FC-EUCONVMC-"
}
# Define the number of resources to be deployed
variable "amount" {
   default = 100
}
# Use an offset to start counting from a certain number
# or else the first server will be named server-01 and #receive an ip address 192.168.105.51
variable "offset" {
default = 1
}


Terraform.tfvars

vsphere_user = "cloudadmin@vmc.local"
# Your cloudadmin password. That you will find on your vmc console.
vsphere_password = "your vCenter PW for Cloudadmin@vmc.local"
# your vCenter server IP adress. Find in your VMC console
vsphere_server = "3.12.16.195"
# Your password for your domain
euconvmc = "your domain password"

Now we will create our terraform file that will use those variables and clone our golden master image 100 times. Of course we prepared the GM before hand. Means a working DHCP, all needed apps and Horizon Agent 7.11 installed.

Creating the Terraform file for cloning the GM

Horizon-FC.tf

data "vsphere_datacenter" "dc" {
  name = "SDDC-Datacenter"
}

data "vsphere_datastore" "datastore" {
  name          = "WorkloadDatastore"
  datacenter_id = "${data.vsphere_datacenter.dc.id}"
}

data "vsphere_compute_cluster" "cluster" {
    name          = "Cluster-1"
    datacenter_id = "${data.vsphere_datacenter.dc.id}"
}

data "vsphere_resource_pool" "pool" {
  name          = "Compute-ResourcePool"
  datacenter_id = "${data.vsphere_datacenter.dc.id}"
}

data "vsphere_network" "network" {
  name          = "Production"
  datacenter_id = "${data.vsphere_datacenter.dc.id}"
}

data "vsphere_virtual_machine" "template" {
  name          = "W10-GM-IM"
  datacenter_id = "${data.vsphere_datacenter.dc.id}"
}

resource "vsphere_virtual_machine" "vm" {
    count = "${var.amount}"
    name             = "${var.name_prefix}${format("%02d", count.index + 1 + var.offset)}"
    folder           = "Workloads"
    resource_pool_id = "${data.vsphere_compute_cluster.cluster.resource_pool_id}"
    datastore_id     = "${data.vsphere_datastore.datastore.id}"
    firmware         = "${data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.firmware}"

    num_cpus = 2
    memory   = 4096
    guest_id = "${data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.guest_id}"
    
   
    network_interface {
        network_id   = "${data.vsphere_network.network.id}"
        adapter_type = "${data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.network_interface_types[0]}"
    }
    
    disk {
        label            = "disk0"
        size             = "${data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.disks.0.size}"
        eagerly_scrub    = "${data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.disks.0.eagerly_scrub}"
        thin_provisioned = "${data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.disks.0.thin_provisioned}"
    }
    
    scsi_type = "${data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.scsi_type}"

    clone {
    template_uuid = "${data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.id}"
            
            customize {
                windows_options {
                    computer_name = "${var.name_prefix}${format("%02d", count.index + 1 + var.offset)}"
                    join_domain = "euconvmc.local"
	                domain_admin_user = "administrator@euconvmc.local"
	                domain_admin_password = "${var.euconvmc}"
                }
                network_interface {}
                
            }
    }
}

Now that we have the code ready, run a terraform plan to check what actually will happen. If you get the right output you can run a terraform apply and it will deploy 100 desktops in about 15 min on a VMC on AWS SDDC.

As we have the desktops deployed but they are not yet in the Horizon available we need to create a “manual desktop pool” in Horizon Connection Server and select the freshly created VMs. Once the desktops selected and integrated in the connection server they will switch to state ” available” and you can connect to those desktops.