How to Use Vagrant with VMware vCenter

Set up Vagrant with VMware vCenter to provision and manage virtual machines effortlessly

Vagrant is a tool made by Hashicorp for provisioning and de-provisioning virtual machines and groups of virtual machines. While Vagrant is frequently used for bringing up test machines on your local computer, sometimes you want to run your virtual machines in your data center using VMware vCenter.

Installation and Setup

Download and Install Vagrant

Download Vagrant from the official website and follow the installation wizard. Alternatively, if you have Chocolatey installed:

choco install vagrant

Install Vagrant vCenter Provider

First, install the prerequisite nokogiri gem, then install the vagrant-vsphere provider:

gem install nokogiri
vagrant plugin install vagrant-vsphere

Configuring vSphere Provider

Create a Vagrantfile in your project directory with the following configuration:

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = 'vsphere'
  config.vm.box_url = 'dummy.box'
  config.ssh.private_key_path = '<Path to your SSH Private Key>'

  config.vm.provider :vsphere do |vsphere|
    vsphere.customization_spec_name = '<Name of Customization spec>'
    vsphere.host = '<FQDN of vcenter server>'
    vsphere.compute_resource_name = '<ESX Cluster Name>'
    vsphere.resource_pool_name = '<Resource Pool Name>'
    vsphere.template_name = '<Folder>/<Template Name>'
    vsphere.name = '<VM Name>'
    vsphere.user = '<vSphere username>'
    vsphere.password = '<Password for vCenter>'
    vsphere.linked_clone = true
    vsphere.insecure = true
  end
end

Note: Using linked_clone makes provisioning much faster, but requires taking a snapshot of the VM template first.

Essential Vagrant Commands

vagrant up: Provisions one or more virtual machines based on your Vagrantfile configurations
vagrant ssh: Connects to your provisioned machine via SSH using key authentication
vagrant destroy: Shuts down and deletes your provisioned VMs

# If you have trouble connecting, specify the provider explicitly
vagrant up --provider=vcenter

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