This section explains how to deploy a standard virtual machine (VM). It is meant as an example. Deploying virtual machines will vary a lot depending on your needs.

SEAPATH handles QEMU virtual machines, deployed with Libvirt. In that case a VM is composed of two files

The disk of the VM, which contains all the data (usually qcow2 format)
The Libvirt XML file of the VM, which describes the hardware to emulate.

For this tutorial, we will first generate the qcow2 image of the VM.

Then we will use an Ansible inventory, which will automatically create the Libvirt XML file for us.

Get a virtual machine disk

You can generate basic virtual machines using the same SEAPATH code base. These VMs are used in SEAPATH CI

You can generate VMs based on Debian or Yocto. It is not necessary to follow the same base for the hypervisor and the VM.

For a Yocto virtual machine

Come back into the seapath-yocto directory and launch

cqfd -b guest_efi

Once the build is complete, you should get the virtual machine file in build/tmp/deploy/images/seapath-vm/seapath-guest-efi-image-seapath-vm.rootfs.wic.qcow2

For a Debian virtual machine

Come back into the build_debian_iso directory and launch

./build_qcow2.sh

The machine qcow2 file should be at the root of the directory under the name seapath-vm.qcow2

Prepare the Ansible inventories

Move your VM qcow2 file under the Ansible directory, in the files folder.

Copy the VM example inventory

cp inventories/examples/seapath-vm-deployement.yaml inventories/my-vm.yaml

Open the my-vm.yamlinventory with your favorite text editor

As for the SEAPATH cluster or standalone inventory example, the modifications are marked as “TODO”. Here are the basic mandatory modifications:

Choose if you want to deploy an rtvm or a simple vm. Remove the other one.
vm_disk: replace by the path to your VM disk, depending of your name
Remove ansible_host and wait_for_connection. We will not connect by SSH to the VM in this tutorial

Launch the VM

The VM is launched by Ansible

In standalone mode

cqfd run ansible-playbook -i inventories/my-inventory.yaml -i inventories/my-vm.yaml playbooks/deploy_vms_standalone.yaml

In cluster mode

cqfd run ansible-playbook -i inventories/my-inventory.yaml -i inventories/my-vm.yaml playbooks/deploy_vms_cluster.yaml

Access the VM

Once deployed, you can access the VM by connecting to one of your SEAPATH machines (SSH).

List the VM deployed on your infrastructure

vm-mgr list

Access one VM on console

vm-mgr console <vm_name>