Ansible Pilot

Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot - Ansible module vmware_guest_snapshot

How to automate taking snapshots named “Ansible Managed Snapshot” to a VMware Virtual Machine “myvm” Ansible Playbook and vmware_guest_snapshot module.

May 18, 2022
Access the Complete Video Course and Learn Quick Ansible by 200+ Practical Lessons

How to Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot with Ansible?

I’m going to show you a live demo and some simple Ansible code. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.

Ansible Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot

Let’s talk about the Ansible module vmware_guest_snapshot. The full name is community.vmware.vmware_guest_snapshot, which means that is part of the collection of modules to interact with VMware, community-supported. It manages virtual machine snapshots in vCenter.

Parameters

The following parameters are useful in order to Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot using the module vmware_guest_snapshot. First of all, we need to establish the connection with VMware vSphere or VMware vCenter using a plethora of self-explicative parameters: hostname, username, password, datacenter, and validate_certs. Once the connection is successfully established you could specify the desired snapshot state, in this case, “present” to take a snapshot. You could also revert or remove a snapshot with the same Ansible module. If you want to remove a snapshot you could also remove all the dependent snapshots using the parameter remove_children. It’s a good practice to set the name and description of the snapshot using thesnapshot_name and description parameters. Advanced practice is to create the memory dump of the virtual machines, please note that memory snapshots take time and resources will take a longer time to create. Default memory dump is disabled but you could enable using memory_dump parameter.

The Best Resources For Ansible

Video Course

Printed Book

eBooks

demo

How to Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot with Ansible. I’m going to show you how to take a snapshot of the Virtual Machine named “myvm” using Ansible Playbook setting a name and description to easily find in your VMware vCenter.

code

---
- name: vm snapshot demo
  hosts: localhost
  become: false
  gather_facts: false
  collections:
    - community.vmware
  pre_tasks:
    - include_vars: vars.yml
  tasks:
    - name: create snapshot
      vmware_guest_snapshot:
        hostname: "{{ vcenter_hostname }}"
        username: "{{ vcenter_username }}"
        password: "{{ vcenter_password }}"
        datacenter: "{{ vcenter_datacenter }}"
        validate_certs: "{{ vcenter_validate_certs }}"
        name: "{{ vm_name }}"
        state: present
        snapshot_name: "Ansible Managed Snapshot"
        folder: "{{ vm_folder }}"
        description: "This snapshot is created by Ansible Playbook"
---
vcenter_hostname: "vmware.example.com"
vcenter_datacenter: "vmwaredatacenter"
vcenter_validate_certs: false
vcenter_username: "[email protected]"
vcenter_password: "MySecretPassword123"
vm_name: "myvm"
vm_template: "mytemplate"
vm_folder: "myvm"
localhost

execution

$ ssh [email protected]
[devops@demo ~]$ cd vmware/
[devops@demo vmware]$ ls
inventory         vars.yml       vm_deploy_template.yml  vm_snapshot_create.yml  vm_stop.yml
requirements.yml  vm_create.yml  vm_info.yml             vm_start.yml
[devops@demo vmware]$ ansible-playbook vm_snapshot_create.yml 
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit
localhost does not match 'all'
PLAY [vm snapshot demo] ***************************************************************************
TASK [include_vars] *******************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [create snapshot] ****************************************************************************
changed: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

idempotency

$ ansible-playbook vm_snapshot_create.yml 
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit
localhost does not match 'all'
PLAY [vm snapshot demo] ***************************************************************************
TASK [include_vars] *******************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [create snapshot] ****************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
before execution
after execution

before execution

vmware_guest_snapshot before execution

after execution

vmware_guest_snapshot after execution

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Recap

Now you know how to create a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine with Ansible. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, Website, Twitter, and Substack to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.

Academy

Learn the Ansible automation technology with some real-life examples in my

My book Ansible By Examples: 200+ Automation Examples For Linux and Windows System Administrator and DevOps

BUY the Complete PDF BOOK to easily Copy and Paste the 250+ Ansible code

Want to keep this project going? Please donate

Access the Complete Video Course and Learn Quick Ansible by 200+ Practical Lessons
Follow me

Subscribe not to miss any new releases