Terraform VMware Cloud Director Provider

The official Terraform provider for VMware Cloud Director

• Documentation of the latest binary release available at https://registry.terraform.io/providers/vmware/vcd/latest/docs
• This project is using go-vcloud-director Golang SDK for making API calls to vCD
• Join through VMware {code} to in #vcd-terraform-dev channel

Part of Terraform

• Website: https://www.terraform.io
• 
• Mailing list: Google Groups
• Hashicorp Discuss

Requirements

• Terraform
• Go 1.19 (to build the provider plugin)

Building The Provider (the modules way)

Note. You only need to build the provider plugin if you want to develop it. Refer to documentation for using it. Terraform will automatically download officially released binaries of this provider plugin on the first run of terraform init command.

Starting with version 2.1 provider started using Go modules This means that it is no longer necessary to be in GOPATH. See more on how to use modules and toggle between modes.

$ cd ~/mydir
$ git clone https://github.com/vmware/terraform-provider-vcd.git
$ cd terraform-provider-vcd/
$ make build

Developing the Provider

Starting with terraform-provider-vcd version 2.1 Go modules are used. This means a few things:

• The code no longer needs to stay in your GOPATH. It can though - see more on how to use modules and toggle between modes.
• When developing terraform-provider-vcd one often needs to add extra stuff to go-vcloud-director. Go modules have a convenient replace directive which can allow you to redirect import path to your own version of go-vcloud-director. go.mod can be altered:
  • You can replace your import with a forked branch like this:

    module github.com/vmware/terraform-provider-vcd/v2
    require (
    ...
    github.com/vmware/go-vcloud-director/v2 v2.1.0-alpha.2
    )
    replace github.com/vmware/go-vcloud-director/v2 v2.1.0-alpha.2 => github.com/my-git-user/go-vcloud-director/v2 v2.1.0-alpha.2    

  • You can also replace pointer to a branch with relative directory

    module github.com/vmware/terraform-provider-vcd/v2
    require (
    ...
    github.com/vmware/go-vcloud-director/v2 v2.1.0-alpha.2
    )
    replace github.com/vmware/go-vcloud-director/v2 v2.1.0-alpha.2 => ../go-vcloud-director

See CODING_GUIDELINES.md for more advice on how to write code for this project.

Using the provider

Installing the built provider

For a more thorough test using the Terraform client, you may want to transfer the plugin in the Terraform directory. A make command can do this for you:

$ make install

This command will build the plugin and transfer it to $HOME/.terraform.d/plugins, with a name that includes the version (as taken from the ./VERSION file).

Starting with terraform 0.13, the path where the plugin is deployed is

`$HOME/.terraform.d/plugins/registry.terraform.io/vmware/vcd/${VERSION}/${OS}_amd64/terraform-provider-vcd_v${VERSION}`

For example, on MacOS:

$HOME/.terraform.d/
├── checkpoint_signature
└── plugins
    ├── registry.terraform.io
    └── vmware
        └── vcd
            ├── 2.9.0
            │   └── darwin_amd64
            │       └── terraform-provider-vcd_v2.9.0
            └── 3.0.0
                └── darwin_amd64
                    └── terraform-provider-vcd_v3.0.0

On Linux:

$HOME/.terraform.d/
├── checkpoint_signature
└── plugins
    ├── registry.terraform.io
    └── vmware
        └── vcd
            ├── 2.9.0
            │   └── linux_amd64
            │       └── terraform-provider-vcd_v2.9.0
            └── 3.0.0
                └── linux_amd64
                    └── terraform-provider-vcd_v3.0.0

Using the new plugin

Once you have installed the plugin as mentioned above, you can simply create a new config.tf as defined in the manual and run

$ terraform init
$ terraform plan
$ terraform apply

When using terraform 0.13+, you also need to have a terraform block either in your script or in an adjacent versions.tf file, containing.

terraform {
  required_providers {
    vcd = {
      source = "vmware/vcd"
    }
  }
  required_version = ">= 0.13"
}

In this block, the vmware part of the source corresponds to the directory $HOME/.terraform.d/plugins/registry.terraform.io/vmware created by the command make install.

Note that versions.tf is generated when you run the terraform 0.13upgrade command. If you have run such command, you need to edit the file and make sure the source path corresponds to the one installed, or remove the file altogether if you have already the right block in your script.