NetApp Cloud Manager automated deployment on VMware with Packer & Terraform

This automation builds a VM template on CentOS 7, deploys that template to VMware vSphere and installs NetApp Cloud Manager - all automated.

In this scenario we use the on-premise (with internet access) version of NetApp Cloud Manager, but you could easily change it to the dark-site version, just change the installation binary.

pre-reqs

• Terraform https://www.terraform.io/downloads
• Packer https://www.packer.io/downloads
• CentOS 7 ISO https://www.centos.org/download/
• NetApp Cloud Manager install package https://mysupport.netapp.com/site/products/all/details/cloud-manager/downloads-tab

This installation is tested and validated with;

• Terraform v1.1.9
• Packer 1.8.0
• CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-2009.iso
• OnCommandCloudManager-V3.9.17

I'm running the automation from my MacBook but should be the same for any *nix based OS.

Run the automation

Create environment variables

Rename the file .env_example to .env and adjust the content to your environment. You need to modify credentials and connection properties to your vCenter server.

Important, the automation uses the default password of server and you !need! to change that after deployment to secure your environment.

Important, Cloud Manager requires 4 vCPU, 16GB RAM & 100+GB storage(I recommend 250GB)

Packer requires a DHCP enabled network to build the VM template

Deploy!

1. Make sure you have all the pre-reqs

2. Upload CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-2009.iso to a VMware datastore and adjust the TF_VAR_iso_url variable in your .env file

3. Place the OnCommandCloudManager-V3.9.17.sh file in the tf_deploy folder

4. Load your environment variables with export $(xargs < .env)

5. Build the VM template with packer build centos.json - (takes about ~15-20 min)

6. Move to the tf_deploy folder and run terraform apply to deploy Cloud Manager VM from the template. You may need to run terraform init the first time to initialize the environment.

7. SSH to the VM and change the root passwordh with passwd root

8. After deployment, browse to http://{cloudmanager_ip} to finish the installation

Read more about Cloud Manager deployment on https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/cloud-manager-setup-admin/task-installing-linux.html

Important, the automation uses the default password of server and you need(!) to change that after deployment to secure your environment.