vmpooler

vmpooler provides configurable 'pools' of instantly-available (running) virtual machines.

Usage

At Puppet, Inc. we run acceptance tests on thousands of disposable VMs every day. Dynamic cloning of VM templates initially worked fine for this, but added several seconds to each test run and was unable to account for failed clone tasks. By pushing these operations to a backend service, we were able to both speed up tests and eliminate test failures due to underlying infrastructure failures.

Installation

Prerequisites

vmpooler is available as a gem

To use the gem gem install vmpooler

Dependencies

Vmpooler requires a Redis server. This is the datastore used for vmpooler's inventory and queueing services.

Configuration

Configuration for vmpooler may be provided via environment variables, or a configuration file.

Please see this configuration document for more details about configuring vmpooler via environment variables.

The following YAML configuration sets up two pools, debian-7-i386 and debian-7-x86_64, which contain 5 running VMs each:

---
:providers:
  :vsphere:
    server: 'vsphere.example.com'
    username: 'vmpooler'
    password: 'swimsw1msw!m'

:redis:
  server: 'redis.example.com'

:config:
  logfile: '/var/log/vmpooler.log'

:pools:
  - name: 'debian-7-i386'
    template: 'Templates/debian-7-i386'
    folder: 'Pooled VMs/debian-7-i386'
    pool: 'Pooled VMs/debian-7-i386'
    datastore: 'vmstorage'
    size: 5
    provider: vsphere
  - name: 'debian-7-x86_64'
    template: 'Templates/debian-7-x86_64'
    folder: 'Pooled VMs/debian-7-x86_64'
    pool: 'Pooled VMs/debian-7-x86_64'
    datastore: 'vmstorage'
    size: 5
    provider: vsphere

See the provided YAML configuration example, vmpooler.yaml.example, for additional configuration options and parameters or for supporting multiple providers.

Running via Docker

A Dockerfile is included in this repository to allow running vmpooler inside a Docker container. A configuration file can be used via volume mapping, and specifying the destination as the configuration file via environment variables, or the application can be configured with environment variables alone. The Dockerfile provides an entrypoint so you may choose whether to run API, or manager services. The default behavior will run both. To build and run:

docker build -t vmpooler . && docker run -e VMPOOLER_CONFIG -p 80:4567 -it vmpooler

To run only the API and dashboard

docker run -p 80:4567 -it vmpooler api

To run only the manager component

docker run -it vmpooler manager

Running Docker inside Vagrant

A vagrantfile is included in this repository. Please see vagrant instructions for details.

API and Dashboard

vmpooler provides an API and web front-end (dashboard) on port :4567. See the provided YAML configuration example, vmpooler.yaml.example, to specify an alternative port to listen on.

API

vmpooler provides a REST API for VM management. See the API documentation for more information.

Dashboard

A dashboard is provided to offer real-time statistics and historical graphs. It looks like this:

Graphite is required for historical data retrieval. See the provided YAML configuration example, vmpooler.yaml.example, for details.

Command-line Utility

• The vmpooler_client.py CLI utility provides easy access to the vmpooler service. The tool is cross-platform and written in Python.
• vmfloaty is a ruby based CLI tool and scripting library written in ruby.

Vagrant plugin

• vagrant-vmpooler Use Vagrant to create and manage your vmpooler instances.

Development and further documentation

For more information about setting up a development instance of vmpooler or other subjects, see the docs/ directory.

Build status

License

vmpooler is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See the LICENSE file for more details.