Create Virtual Machines with Vagrant

Week 6 of Configuration Management Systems course.

Course material: https://terokarvinen.com/2022/palvelinten-hallinta-2022p2/

Environment: Windows 11 laptop with 40 GB of free disk space.

Read and summarize

• Karvinen 2017: Vagrant Revisited – Install & Boot New Virtual Machine in 31 seconds (I recommend using vagrant init debian/bullseye64 as VM)

Vagrant requires only these three commands to get a machine up:

$ vagrant init debian/bullseye64
$ vagrant up
$ vagrant ssh

• Karvinen 2021: Two Machine Virtual Network With Debian 11 Bullseye and Vagrant

You can setup two Virtual Machines to run on the same network but on different local IP addresses with one Vagrant script.

• Karvinen 2018: Salt Quickstart – Salt Stack Master and Slave on Ubuntu Linux

For basic master-slave architecture Salt implementation, install salt-master and salt-minion on the respective machines. Then edit the slave machine minion file at /etc/salt/minion. Add master: MASTER IP HERE and, if you want to, id: RANDOM NAME. Restart the minion service. Run salt-key -A (-A = accept keys) to accept the slave connecting to master. Now you can control the slave with the master.

Hello Vagrant

Objective: Install a Virtual Machine with Vagrant.

I downloaded Vagrant Windows AMD64 binary from the official website.

I ran the installer wizard with the default options and restarted my PC.

I opened Windows Powershell as administrator after searching for it in the start menu.

I created the folder structure for C:\users\valka\vagrant\debian with mkdir.

I created a new Vagrantfile.

> vagrant init debian/bullseye64

vagrant init creates a new Vagrantfile and a specified I wanted preconfigured settings for Debian. Bullseye is the codename given to Debian version 11 and 64 refers to 64-bit version.

I created and started up the new Virtual Machine.

> vagrant up

I was able to connect to the Virtual Machine via SSH.

> vagrant ssh

Private network

Objective: Install two Virtual Machines to the same network with Vagrant. Name one VM “isanta” and the other “renki1”. Test that “renki1” can connect to the “isanta” VM (ping or nc).

I created a new folder to C:\users\valka\vagrant\twohost.

I created a new Vagrantfile with vagrant init. I configured it to create two Virtual Machines with different local IP addresses. (Source: Tero Karvinen)

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "debian/bullseye64"

  config.vm.define "isanta" do |isanta|
		isanta.vm.hostname = "isanta"
		isanta.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.88.101"
	end

	config.vm.define "renki1", primary: true do |renki1|
		renki1.vm.hostname = "renki1"
		renki1.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.88.102"
	end
end

I shutdown my previous machine just so it doesn’t run in the background.

> vagrant global-status
id       name    provider   state   directory
------------------------------------------------------------------------
7cf3167  default virtualbox running C:/users/valka/vagrant/debian

> vagrant halt 7cf3167

I created and started the two new Virtual Machines with vagrant up.

I listed all the Vagrant VMs with vagrant global-status.

I connected to “renki1” via SSH.

> vagrant ssh renki1

I pinged “isanta” from “renki1” and got a response.

> ping 192.168.88.101

Salt master-slave

Objective: Implement a master-slave architecture with Salt over a network. Set the previous assignment’s “renki1” as a slave to “isanta”.

While still connected to the previous assignments “renki1” Virtual Machine I updated packages and installed salt-minion.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install salt-minion

I modified /etc/salt/minion.

$ sudoedit /etc/salt/minion

# I added these lines to the start of the file:
master: 192.168.88.101
id: renki1

I restarted the salt-minion service so the changes to the settings take effect.

$ sudo systemctl restart salt-minion.service

I exited the “renki1” SSH session and connected to “isanta”.

$ exit
> vagrant ssh isanta

I updated packages and installed salt-master.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install salt-master

I authorized the slave machine to take orders from the master with salt-key.

$ sudo salt-key -A

• -A flag is used to accept keys.

I was able to run commands on the slave machine with Salt.

$ sudo salt '*' cmd.run "echo Hello"

Creating a Salt module

Objective: Create the first version of your own Salt module. The mini project must have some sort of use case even if it’s made up. Create a page (Github, Gitlab) for project that outlines the basic information about the project. The functionality of the module must be tested but it doesn’t have to be finished.

I decided to make a module that installs a starter pack of useful programs. View the module in GitHub. Read the report.

Sources

• Tero Karvinen: https://terokarvinen.com/2022/palvelinten-hallinta-2022p2/