Proxmox virtual machine *automation* in Terraform

[@onetwofourfive]

“root user has all the privileges” - yes, therefore you should NOT use it in terraform and create another user with ALL NEEDED privileges, not all.

[@JamesGreen-gv4yn]

Thank you for the video, I have been looking for a way to do this as I have been using Proxmox in my home lab and love it! Learned Terraform for my work with AWS and really wanted a way to use it for my home lab as well. Note, that an even better approach for the credentials is to set environment variables `TF_VARS_proxmox_api_token_id` and `TF_VARS_proxmox_api_token_secret` and export them so Terraform picks them up. This way you don't have to worry about accidentally checking that file into a repository by mistake. You can also set them in your shell `rc` file (ie ~/bashrc) so they are always set. Options expand from there. This is what I will probably do.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you! Great ideas to improve :)

[@Pariah902]

FYI, you don't really need to set the vmid. If you don't the terraform provider will use the next available VM ID. This makes the terraform scripts a bit more flexible

[@christianlempa]

Thanks! Yeah it will pick a random ID. However, I have an organized system there, that's why I defined it, but yes you're right ;)

[@manedurphy]

This is for sure something that I want to implement on my proxmox cluster. Thanks for sharing!

[@jerichoortega9659]

Excellent tutorial, thanks a lot ! Very well explained and you make it look so simple, good work !

[@CrashLoopBackOff-K8s]

Liked, subbed, and leaving a comment for the algorithm. Appreciate the content - great job.

[@DarrolKHarris]

You always great videos. You take complicated topics and make it understandable.

[@christianlempa]

I appreciate that! Thank you so much

[@chrisumali9841]

thanks for the demo and info, have a great day

[@christianlempa]

Thanks, you too!

[@TheLocalStuff]

Thanks!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much for your support :)

[@DietrichSchomberg]

It is 4:30 in the morning and just wanted relax and watch some videos … now i that have seen yours and i wanted to get up and try it out. VERY NICE WORK to get me out of my warm and cosy bed 🎉😂 need to remember watching cat videos next time

[@christianlempa]

Haha thank you ;) Glad you enjoyed the video so much you even skipped the cat videos

[@DietrichSchomberg]

@@christianlempa 😂😂😂👍 dein Video war interessanter als gedacht. Scriptbasiert eine Test Umgebung aufzusetzen steht schon lange auf meiner Liste. Was ich bisher gemacht/versucht habe mit vagrant und virtual Box war nicht sehr stabil😔

[@Spydaw]

Whooo, this is awesome. Thank you for this video, good job ;) I am also using Packer and Terraform for my VM's. I am also using Argo workflows to rebuild my template every second day so that my template is 100% up-to-date.

[@stevendonaldson1216]

Thanks Christian. I hope life is going well for you.

[@christianlempa]

Thanks mate! Yeah it's all good, thanks for asking 😀

[@zoejs7042]

thanks for making this. i've been using the proxmox terraform provider for some time now to provision my k3s cluster. hopefully this video gets the provider more attention since it is lacking in some functionality and has been buggy in some of my experiences

[@RODDAL]

What would you rate the provider's current usability from 1-10?

[@jefffrederick258]

I'm glad i found this video.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you! :)

[@sussudio4384]

To provision a Kubernetes cluster in my Proxmox homelab, it was long and tedious. Before: - I had to create the virtual machines manually from an ISO, - Then I accelerated the process with Cloud-Init images, - But i had to install the packages manually, - Same for the configurations - I make sure to make snapshots of my initial configuration, - If your configuration fails, i delete my machines and we start again... Duration : 15-30 minutes and more.... Now : a Terraform declarative file is enough to get my kubernetes cluster with the desired configuration, Duration : 3 to 5 minutes maximum and a simple "terraform apply" is enough to destroy and rebuild my cluster,

[@RahulKumar-hq6wm]

Thanks bro your videos are always informative 🔥🔥🔥

[@christianlempa]

Thank you! Glad you liked it 🙂

[@dennisdesgehtdichnixan2022]

This video came just at the right time. I am planning on doing sth. with that in the next few weeks. Thanks / Danke & Grüße

[@christianlempa]

Vielen Dank! Grüße zurück :)

[@MrNoBSgiven]

OK... Christian did it again. I am still confused about how Terraform picks the file names to run plan and build without using -var-file parameter. Also, I did have a very ugly moment (lots of "F" word usage🤣 ) as I didn't notice the wrong network subnet specification (my put "0" instead of 24 🤦‍♂️). After that Proxmox created a new cloned VM like a champ. THANK YOU Christian. One more - should anyone try to specify Vlan us "tag =" withing the "network" parameter brackets. Took me a while too. Now a suggestion for video for Christian - a short version for using Terraform to create Proxmox LXD container. It should be long hanging fruit as far as KZbin monatiztion is concerned.

[@christianlempa]

Thanks bro :) great you could solve these issues! Still have other stuff on my list but maybe I'll take a look at LXC at some point 😀

[@Sm0rezDev]

Now that i have a base image with cloud-init and a disk size of 16gb, If I want to clone it with terraform and i need to increase the disk size for my kubernetes cluster how can I do it without having the exact same parameter? plus i have issue with "virtio0 - cloud-init drive is already attached at 'ide0'"

[@phii7u]

"virtio0 - cloud-init drive is already attached at 'ide0'" -> I also get the same error from time to time and I don't know why when it happens. I am using Proxmox 8 so maybe something has changed between releases.

[@georgelza]

please explain qemu... whats its part in this and what does the agent do that you mentioned. other that the api key. what else is set up, from where do you run your Tf scripts... guessing it needs to be pointed at the datacenter address some where? busy downloading repo.

[@alexeyromanov]

Hi Christian, great video. I am wondering if it is possible to automate Proxmox servers upgrades, not just VMs. Couldn't find a proper playbook

[@christianlempa]

That's a good question, I think you can simply do that using the package manager, however it only does the minor updates, not the major ones where you have to update the package sources

[@SlingerJames]

Have you used the Telmate Proxmox provider to install packages or run scripts on newly built virtual machines without using provisioning?

[@kevinyu9934]

Nice work! Keep it up bro.

[@christianlempa]

Thanks, will do!

[@thiagobarrichelo]

This is gold! Thanks for sharing.

[@christianlempa]

Thanks 😉

[@padraigconnolly2991]

I had to add "-var-file=credentails.tfvars" whenever running terraform plan or terraform apply, is there something missed?

[@JamesGreen-gv4yn]

The file name must end in `.auto.tfvars` in order for Terraform to automatically use it. You appear to have left out the `auto` part.

[@padraigconnolly2991]

@@JamesGreen-gv4ynAh perfect thank you!

[@Toparlak123]

Do you have an alternative Terraform provider for Proxmox VE 8? Telmate no longer maintains it.

[@manchie18]

Does this mean I have to manually change each Ip address since each new vm will have the same IP?

[@xclsd-c9l]

What I don't understand: Why not just use the clone-functionality directly in the GUI? At the moment I can't see the advantage of setting this up in code

[@maxdiamond55]

Great tutorial, thanks.

[@Itshacksmith]

Any way to automate linked clone as its only creating a full clone...

[@Psyt0s]

I have the exact same settings on the disk block as in Proxmox template. but for some reason, the original disk gets replaced by a new one completely empty of the same size of the original.... I am using: disk { storage = "local" type = "scsi" size = "128G" }

[@mikkel3135]

Did the same kind of thing in Ansible, and now trying to see if I can make a custom Crossplane provider for it. Automation is awesome!

[@twostar-ii380]

The cloned VM hostname and IP address doesn't change, any idea why this is happening? (retains same hostname and ip as template)

[@christianlempa]

No idea, maybe you could join our discord, share your files and we might be able to help

[@هردمبیل-ت2ش]

Hi Christian, thanks for your video! Is this provider still up-to-date?

[@GodAtum]

Hi, I followed everything OK. but my VM doesn't pick up the static IP until after I manually reboot it. are you having the same issue?

[@AndreaGhensi]

I am literally doing the same thing, with libvirt instead of proxmox (I figured out I don't need clustering and many other things proxmox offers). I still have to iron out some connection problems, but things are looking good. For vm images, I skipped packer and found suse's MicroOS images, already shipped with k3s (to build my kubernetes cluster, but theres many other flavours)

[@tmtb]

Great video, thank you. How would you change this project to create/maintain a list of vms?

[@AndreaGhensi]

If they are identical you can use "count" to specify how many vms you need; if you need to do some adjustments you can build a list of objects and use "for_each" to iterate the objects; if they are completely different, you ca declare multiple "proxmox_vm_qemu" resources

[@christianlempa]

I use a single Git Repo for my Proxmox VMs in Terraform. And I split the multiple projects into separate .tf files. That's probably not the best way to do it, but the only way I know :D

[@rabbanidar]

Did you clone from the template which had cloudint disk attached? I did and it deployed the VM fine took the cloudint settings and all was good. But then if I rerun the terraform apply it always tries to update the VM with removing the cloudint disk. I assume this is because in the plan I didn't define cloudint disk?

[@r3v0luti0ndud3]

whats the name of your vscode color theme?

[@silverioantolo1008]

I follow your setup but still this appears>> Error: invalid character '

[@Lamoboos223]

can i make the new vm have different storage size than the parent vm?

[@m8_981]

Hi, im wondering how to use this in production. Do you just have 1 project where you manage all your virtual mashines from?

[@christianlempa]

That's how I currently do it because for me, it's just easier to manage everything in a single proxmox-terraform project. But you could also split it into multiple projects.

[@1Copenut]

Great video Christian. I’m looking forward to getting up to speed with Packer and Terraform. How are you generating the SSH key for your TF provision script? Is it the same key being used for all VMs?

[@goodgameplays9571]

did you find a solution for this please ?

[@enderst81]

Any plans to add Ansible to this would be awesome.

[@DavidIduate]

Can you make a video of how to use the username and password instead of the API token and Api secret, I keep getting errors

[@davideferrero3068]

I set a password with cipassword under ciuser, and i can login with those credentials, ani hints?

[@reboundpt4987]

Nice vid! If I don't pass a password for the user in my .tf files, somehow I can login? I'm using ssh keys, but it keeps prompting my for password, although I have not given any passphrase. Any ideas?

[@angelosnm]

Amazing!

[@MahdiYusuf]

Great video! Keep it up dude!

[@christianlempa]

Thanks! I'll do

[@winstonsmith6259]

Having trouble getting the provider working, in this case Telmate terraform-proxmox-provider and provisioner. The video seems to gloss over that important detail. As do the others. Meh..

[@g-luu]

Amazing... thank you.

[@christianlempa]

You’re welcome

[@DavidIduate]

Does anyone know how to use the username and password for Proxmox to deploy instead of using the token and secret? Please it's urgent

[@christianlempa]

I'm sorry, but you have to refer to the official docs of Proxmox, which needs the API interface to perform automated actions (which requires API token to authenticate)

[@DavidIduate]

@@christianlempa is there a way I could text you privately?

[@ewoks42]

still waiting for Ansible version of this video... ;)

[@artemsolovev9231]

not working for me

[@bogy5259]

I dont See the Advantage... You still have to Set every Parameter (IP etc.) Manually But in a File with an extra Thing. Do it in proxmox is way simpler

[@christianlempa]

I think we need to look at the bigger picture why it’s important to learn IaC instead of just Homelab usage. It’s an important skill in professional IT, and the learning benefit is huge!

[@sussudio4384]

crash for me......

[@andydiep4162]

noice

[@xrehpicx]

Gru

[@darahk88]

learning another language for what? isn't any better graphical alternative?