Building a Home Lab server — Part II

In this blog post, we will take a look at the Golang based script using Pulumi, an Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tool, to automate the process of creating a virtual machine (VM) in a Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE).

The following example uses Pulumi package available at https://github.com/muhlba91/pulumi-proxmoxve, which is a Pulumi provider for Proxmox VE. The provider itself is built on top of the Terraform provider for Proxmox, found at https://github.com/bpg/terraform-provider-proxmox.

Code Walkthrough

1. Loading Environment Variables

The script starts by loading environment variables from a .env file using the godotenv package.

.env file

PROXMOX_USERNAME=XXXXXXXXXXXX
PROXMOX_PASSWORD=XXXXXXXXXXXX

main.go file

err := godotenv.Load()

It then reads the Proxmox username and password from the environment. These values are used to authenticate with the Proxmox server.

proxmoxUsername := os.Getenv("PROXMOX_USERNAME")
proxmoxPassword := os.Getenv("PROXMOX_PASSWORD")

if proxmoxUsername == "" || proxmoxPassword == "" {
    return fmt.Errorf("PROXMOX_USERNAME and PROXMOX_PASSWORD must be set in the .env file")
}

2. Configuring the Proxmox Provider

The next step is setting up the Proxmox provider, Endpoint specifies the URL for the Proxmox server, Username and Password are used for authentication, Insecurewhether to skip the TLS verification step.

provider, err := proxmoxve.NewProvider(ctx, "proxmoxve", &proxmoxve.ProviderArgs{
    Endpoint: pulumi.String("https://192.168.1.198:8006/"),
    Username: pulumi.String(proxmoxUsername),
    Password: pulumi.String(proxmoxPassword),
    Insecure: pulumi.Bool(true),
})

3. Downloading an ISO Image

To create a VM, an ISO image is required. The following lines downloads the latest Ubuntu ISO from the official Ubuntu releases. DatastoreId and NodeName to specify where the ISO will be stored on the Proxmox node, Url pointing to the download source.

iso, err := download.NewFile(ctx, "latest-ubuntu22-jammy-iso", &download.FileArgs{
    ContentType: pulumi.String("iso"),
    DatastoreId: pulumi.String("local"),
    NodeName:    pulumi.String("pve"),
    Url:         pulumi.String("https://releases.ubuntu.com/jammy/ubuntu-22.04.5-live-server-amd64.iso"),
}, pulumi.Provider(provider))

4. Creating the Virtual Machine

The following code defines a new VM configuration and provisions it.

newVM, err := vm.NewVirtualMachine(ctx, "vm", &vm.VirtualMachineArgs{
    NodeName: pulumi.String("pve"),
    Name:     pulumi.String("vm"),
    Cpu: &vm.VirtualMachineCpuArgs{
        Cores: pulumi.Int(2),
    },
    Memory: &vm.VirtualMachineMemoryArgs{
        Dedicated: pulumi.Int(4800),
        Floating:  pulumi.Int(4800),
    },
    Disks: &vm.VirtualMachineDiskArray{
        vm.VirtualMachineDiskArgs{
            Size:       pulumi.Int(25),
            Interface:  pulumi.String("scsi0"),
            Iothread:   pulumi.Bool(true),
            FileFormat: pulumi.String("raw"),
        },
    },
    Cdrom: vm.VirtualMachineCdromArgs{
        Enabled:   pulumi.Bool(true),
        FileId:    iso.ID(),
        Interface: pulumi.String("ide3"),
    },
    BootOrders: pulumi.StringArray{
        pulumi.String("scsi0"),
        pulumi.String("ide3"),
        pulumi.String("net0"),
    },
    ScsiHardware:    pulumi.String("virtio-scsi-single"),
    OperatingSystem: vm.VirtualMachineOperatingSystemArgs{Type: pulumi.String("l26")},
    NetworkDevices: vm.VirtualMachineNetworkDeviceArray{
        vm.VirtualMachineNetworkDeviceArgs{
            Model:  pulumi.String("virtio"),
            Bridge: pulumi.String("vmbr0"),
        },
    },
    OnBoot: pulumi.Bool(true),
}, pulumi.DependsOn([]pulumi.Resource{iso}), pulumi.Provider(provider))

• Cpu: Allocates 2 CPU cores to the VM.

• Memory: Assigns 4800 MB (4.8 GB) of memory to both dedicated and floating memory allocations.

• Disks: Creates a 25 GB disk with the SCSI interface, using the raw file format and enabling I/O threading for better performance.

• Cdrom: Configures a virtual CD-ROM to boot from the ISO file previously downloaded. It's attached to the ide3 interface.

• BootOrders: Specifies the sequence in which devices are checked during the boot process—first the SCSI disk ("scsi0"), then the CD-ROM ("ide3"), followed by the network adapter ("net0").

• ScsiHardware: Sets the SCSI controller to "irtio-scsi-single" for better I/O performance.

• OperatingSystem: Specifies the OS type as Linux 2.6 ("l26"), which is appropriate for modern Linux distributions.

• NetworkDevices: Adds a network adapter using the "virtio" model for optimal performance and attaches it to the "vmbr0" bridge.

• OnBoot: Ensures the VM starts automatically when the Proxmox node boots.

• DependsOn and Provider: Ensures that the VM creation depends on the ISO file download being complete and uses the specified Proxmox provider.

Reference:

[1] https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-qm.html

[2] https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/qm.conf.5.html

[3] https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/proxmoxve/

[4] https://github.com/bpg/terraform-provider-proxmox