Best Home Lab Automation Tools! Packer, Terraform, PowerShell, and Ansible

Using automation provides a powerful way to ensure your virtual machines, containers, and hosts are configured and managed across the environment consistently, seamlessly, and securely. We take a look at using home lab automation tools to keep VMs and home lab infrastructure updated, configured, and using it to deploy new templates and virtual machines.
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Introduction to home lab automation tools I use - 0:00
Hashicorp Packer - what it is and what it does - 1:05
Looking at Packer and a demo of running the command - 1:46
Talking about Packer and how it fully automates operating system installation - 2:20
Introduction to Terraform, what it does, and how you use it - 2:54
Looking at executing Terraform, state files, and configuration - 3:53
Introduction to PowerShell, background, and what it does - 5:08
Introduction to PowerCLI module for PowerShell and how PowerShell is extensible - 5:44
Looking at installing the PowerCLI module - 6:14
Using PowerShell and PowerCLI with Visual Studio Code - 7:04
Introduction to Ansible and configuration management with Playbooks - 7:37
Looking at an inventory file, the Ansible ping command - 8:46
Running an Ansible Playbook to update Linux VMs - 8:56
Wrapping up and thoughts on automation tools in the home lab - 9:20
Building an Ubuntu 22.04 template with Packer:
www.virtualizationhowto.com/2...
Automated Windows Server 2022 Packer Build:
www.virtualizationhowto.com/2...
Terraform vSphere tutorial - Linux Virtual Machine Clone:
www.virtualizationhowto.com/2...
Ansible provisioning VMware VMs:
www.virtualizationhowto.com/2...

[@JasonsLabVideos]

I just finished my Esxi 8 install video, and mentioned you AND will be linking this channel !! Such good content here !

[@VirtualizationHowto]

Jason that is awesome and thank you!

[@JasonsLabVideos]

@@VirtualizationHowto Trying to get a hold of you :) can you please pm me or message me ?

[@VirtualizationHowto]

Jason, thank you for all your support! Shoot me an email from my address on the site.

[@ncriit9657]

Great informative video, by chance is the code you used for deploying a VM on terraform available? I'm having some issues understanding it myself but I learn a lot from examples and dissecting other's code. Thanks!

[@kharmastreams8319]

For some reason, my 2022 server packer setup hangs on WinRM connection. (Have even used the ansible powershell script for winrm enablement, without it working)

[@shawnlewis389]

Great video! It has piqued my interest. Can you go deeper? Maybe some step-by-step practical scenarios?

[@VirtualizationHowto]

Shawn thanks for your comment. I am looking at creating more thorough walkthroughs and real-life scenarios for each of the tools. Be sure to subscribe and stay tuned!

[@lidoror]

great videos can you make one on virtual container in esxi?

[@estebancastano2299]

your voice man, wow Amazing

[@VirtualizationHowto]

Thanks! 😃

[@arntodd2322]

What about best ML/AI tools for home lab VE? :)

[@jonpok2151]

Can You make separate video how to configure Terraforme ans simple code to apply something to vsphere? thx

[@VirtualizationHowto]

Jon, I will keep this in mind for a future video....definitely lots of ideas around these automation topics. Thanks again!

[@sinin70]

Now we need some projects to help understand the possibilities of what these tools can do, and how they do them.

[@VirtualizationHowto]

Swinster, yes more videos to come on this topic!

[@sinin70]

@@VirtualizationHowto awesome. I found myself needing to deploy a vanilla Linux vm this week. Most of the time, I use OVA appliances (such as from Bitnami, as I'm lazy and hate having to go through a ISO install), but I was looking for a simpler way. There is an OVA for Unbunu, but I soon realised that even this needs some work to configure users and other elements. This looked like it could be completed but something called cloud-init, but I didn't have the time to even figure that out, so reverted to the long hand method.

[@rigod0n]

kestra!

[@vinvvinv7460]

Hi can you please make a video & explain the writing/structure of Ansible & Terraform in a simple manner & in layman's terms, like when & where to add spaces, hyphens, what is variable, etc it's a bit confusing ... please it's a request, do reply

[@NetBandit70]

When you spend more time maintaining your toolset and install scripts than just doing an install.

[@VirtualizationHowto]

Net Bandit thanks for the comment! The barrier to automation is the upfront time. But it pays dividends in the return of time later.