govcsim is a vCenter Server and ESXi API based simulator that offers a quick fix solution for prototyping and testing code. It simulates the vCenter Server model and can be used to create data centres, hosts, clusters, etc.
govcsim (a vCenter Server simulator) is an open source vCenter Server and ESXi API based simulator written in the Go language, using the govmomi library. govcsim simulates the vCenter Server model by creating various vCenter related objects like data centres, hosts, clusters, resource pools, networks and datastores.
If you are a software developer or quality engineer who works with vCenter and related technologies, then you can use govcsim for fast prototyping and for testing your code.
In this article, we will write an Ansible Playbook to gather all VMs installed on a given govcsim installation. Ansible provides many modules for managing and maintaining VMware resources.
Do note that govcsim will simulate almost the identical environments provided by VMWare vCenter and ESXi server.
Installation
We will use Fedora 26 for the installation of govcsim. Let’s assume that Ansible has been already installed using dnf or a source tree.
The requirements for installing govcsim are:
1. Golang 1.7+
2. Git
Step 1: Installing Golang
To install the Go tools, type the following command at the terminal:
$ sudo dnf install -y golang
Step 2: Configuring the Golang workspace
Use the following commands to configure the Golang workspace:
$ mkdir -p $HOME/go $ echo ‘export GOPATH=$HOME/go’ >> $HOME/.bashrc $ source $HOME/.bashrc
Check if everything is working by using the command given below:
$ go env GOPATH
This should return your home directory path with the Go workspace.
Step 3: Download govcsim using the ‘go get’ command
$ go get github.com/vmware/govmomi/vcsim $ $GOPATH/bin/vcsim -h
If everything is configured correctly, you will be able to get the help options related to govcsim.
To start govcsim without any argument, use the following command:
$ vcsim
Now, govcsim is working. You can check out the various methods available by visiting https://127.0.0.1:8989/about on your favourite browser.
Testing govcsim with Ansible
Now, let’s try to write a simple Ansible Playbook, which will list down all VMs emulated by govcsim. The complete code is given in Figure 3.
After running the playbook from Figure 3, you will get a list of virtual machine objects that are simulated by the govcsim server (see Figure 4).
You can play around and write different playbooks to get information about govcsim simulated VMware objects.
