Hi @Biggen, Hi @olivierlambert ,

I am also in the process of evaluating a terraform+ansible based tool-stack.

• XCP-ng + XO + cloud-init + terraform + ansible
  vs.
• ESXi + vServer + cloud-init + terraform + ansible

After a lot of pain and constant cursing of the cloud-init documentation I am finally at a point where I can deploy a ubuntu-1804 machine from a template and have it come up with the network settings what I want it to have. (i.e. a static config that, in a later step, will be created from data out of an IPAM / inventory system)

This is step one if I want to be able to control the deployment of new machines and not have them shop around for the first dhcp response they get...

However this seems to only work if I use the NoCloud data source.
Currently I am somewhat stuck.
I can't seem to get terraform to provide network-configuration settings to the VM.

Apparently cloud-init was designed with just the public cloud in mind. Thus they seem to try to keep those pesky users away from the precious network configuration.

On the other hand, What would be the best way to implement a terraform-driven infrastructure, if I can't configure the host's IP settings directly via cloud-init? Which data source would you suggest for a private cloud?

I'd much rather implement it all based on XCP-ng+XO but ESXi+vSphere seems to have a headstart where it comes to integration with both terraform and cloud-init.

What I am currently missing in XCP-ng/XO is a vision for the private cloud in times of infrastructure as code and DevOps. A world where Devs do have more power (though not necessarily more skills) to spin up virtual environments just to run their test suite.

I'd also love to see some kind of "This is how we imagine things to scale..." Like the very readable Cloud Architecture documentation of OpenNebula.

@olivierlambert I managed to set the "User config" stuff by terraform. What I can't seem to get my head around is how to set the "Network config" for the nocloud provider via terraform. Are there examples tf files that I could take as a starting off point?

@fohdeesha So if nocloud is the only datasource that does allow to configure the newly created VM's network, how is the network configured in all the other cases? For the terraform vshere provider I can see it done via "customize { network_interface { ipv4_address ".
How do they get that information to the inside of the machine? Do they use the guest-tools to manipulate the interface settings? And how should this work on XCP-ng? I was under the impression that the guest tools were only reporting the network settings from the guest to the host.

What I want to do with terraform and cloud-init, is to create a private network with multiple VMs where I can reliably connect from one machine to another by their IP.
If I can't configure the IP settings with terraform via cloud-init, but assuming that I can set the MAC addresses via terraform, I guess I will have to go with a DHCP server with static mapping of MAC to IP there.

Hi @Biggen, Hi @olivierlambert ,

I am also in the process of evaluating a terraform+ansible based tool-stack.

• XCP-ng + XO + cloud-init + terraform + ansible
  vs.
• ESXi + vServer + cloud-init + terraform + ansible

After a lot of pain and constant cursing of the cloud-init documentation I am finally at a point where I can deploy a ubuntu-1804 machine from a template and have it come up with the network settings what I want it to have. (i.e. a static config that, in a later step, will be created from data out of an IPAM / inventory system)

This is step one if I want to be able to control the deployment of new machines and not have them shop around for the first dhcp response they get...

However this seems to only work if I use the NoCloud data source.
Currently I am somewhat stuck.
I can't seem to get terraform to provide network-configuration settings to the VM.

Apparently cloud-init was designed with just the public cloud in mind. Thus they seem to try to keep those pesky users away from the precious network configuration.

On the other hand, What would be the best way to implement a terraform-driven infrastructure, if I can't configure the host's IP settings directly via cloud-init? Which data source would you suggest for a private cloud?

I'd much rather implement it all based on XCP-ng+XO but ESXi+vSphere seems to have a headstart where it comes to integration with both terraform and cloud-init.

What I am currently missing in XCP-ng/XO is a vision for the private cloud in times of infrastructure as code and DevOps. A world where Devs do have more power (though not necessarily more skills) to spin up virtual environments just to run their test suite.

I'd also love to see some kind of "This is how we imagine things to scale..." Like the very readable Cloud Architecture documentation of OpenNebula.