Guest Operating System Validation on vSphere using Ansible

Getting Started

Prerequisites

1. Install Ansible on your control machine, please refer to Installing Ansible
2. Install Tesseract Open Source OCR Engine for extracting text from screenshots, please refer to Installing Tesseract
3. Install required Python libraries in requirements.txt

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Install required Ansible collections with latest version in requirements.yml

$ ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml

5. Log in to local control machine as root or a user in sudoers, which must enable NOPASSWD for all commands

Steps to Launch Testing

1. Git clone project from github to your workspace on control machine.
2. Set the parameters required for testing in this file: vars/test.yml.
3. Modify the test cases in test case list file in below default path.
   • For Linux testing: linux/gosv_testcase_list.yml
   • For Windows testing: windows/gosv_testcase_list.yml
4. Launch testing using below commands from the same path of main.yml.

  # For Linux testing:
  # you can use below command to use the default variables file "vars/test.yml",
  # and default test case list file "linux/gosv_testcase_list.yml"
  $ ansible-playbook main.yml

  # For Linux or Windows testing:
  # you can use below command to set the path of a customized variables file and
  # test case list file
  $ ansible-playbook main.yml -e "testing_vars_file=/path_to/test.yml testing_testcase_file=/path_to/gosv_testcase_list.yml"

5. A new log folder will be created for current test run, which will include log files and files collected in test cases, e.g., logs/test-vm/2021-07-06-09-27-51/. You can find log files:

• results.log which contains testbed information, VM information and test case results
• full_debug.log which contains testing debug logs
• failed_tasks.log which contains failed tasks logs
• known_issues.log which lists known issues meet in current test run

Catalog

• main.yml: Main playbook for guest operating system validation test
• ansible.cfg: User customized Ansible configuration file
• autoinstall: Folder for guest operating system unattend install configuration files
• common: Folder for common tasks called in test cases
• docs: Folder for guide file and known issues
• env_setup: Folder for playbooks or tasks which to prepare or cleanup testing environment
• linux: Folder for playbooks to test Linux guest operating system
• windows: Folder for playbooks to test Windows guest operating system
• plugin: Folder for plugin scripts
• tools: Folder for 3rd-party tools used in test cases
• vars: Folder for variable files used in testing
• changelogs: Folder for changelog of each release

Supported Testing Scenarios

This project supports below scenarios for end-to-end guest operating system validation testing

• Deploy VM and install guest operating system from ISO image
• Deploy VM from an OVA template
• Existing VM with installed guest operating system, which should satisfy below requirments.
  • VM has only one network adapter and the network adapter is connected.
  • SSH and Python are installed and enabled.
  • The vm_python variable in vars/test.yml must be set with correct python path. Or user can set PATH in /etc/environment in guest operating system to include the binary directory path to python.
  • The root user should be enabled and permitted to log in through SSH in Linux guest operating system.
  • Execute ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 script in Windows guest operating system in advance.

Compatible Guest Operating Systems

Guest Operating Systems	Automatic Install from ISO Image	Deploy from OVA Template	Existing VM with Guest Operating System Installed
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x, 8.x, 9.x	✔️		✔️
CentOS 7.x, 8.x	✔️		✔️
CentOS Stream 8, 9, 10	✔️		✔️
Oracle Linux 7.x, 8.x, 9.x	✔️		✔️
Rocky Linux 8.x, 9.x	✔️		✔️
AlmaLinux 8.x, 9.x	✔️		✔️
SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3 and later	✔️		✔️
VMware Photon OS 3.0, 4.0, 5.0	✔️	✔️	✔️
Ubuntu 20.04 and later	✔️	✔️	✔️
Flatcar 2592.0.0 and later		✔️	✔️
Debian 10.10 and later, 11.x, 12.x	✔️		✔️
Windows 10, 11	✔️		✔️
Windows Server 2019, 2022, 2025	✔️		✔️
UnionTech OS Server 20 1050a	✔️		✔️
Fedora 36 Server, Workstation and later	✔️		✔️
ProLinux Server 7.9, 8.5	✔️		✔️
FreeBSD 13 and later	✔️		✔️
Pardus 21.2 Server,XFCE Desktop and later	✔️		✔️
Pardus 23.x Server,XFCE Desktop	✔️		✔️
openSUSE Leap 15.3 and later	✔️		✔️
BCLinux 8.x	✔️		✔️
BCLinux-for-Euler 21.10	✔️		✔️
Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) 4.13 and later		✔️	✔️
FusionOS 22 and 23	✔️		✔️
Miracle Linux 8.x, 9.x	✔️		✔️
Kylin Linux Advanced Server V10	✔️		✔️

Notes This compatible guest operating systems list is used for this project only. For guest operating system support status on ESXi, please refer to VMware Compatibility Guide.

Docker images

• Latest (Release v3.2):
  • projects.packages.broadcom.com/gos_cert/ansible-vsphere-gos-validation:latest
• Release v3.2:
  • projects.packages.broadcom.com/gos_cert/ansible-vsphere-gos-validation:v3.2

Launch testing using Docker image

1. Execute below commands in your machine

$ docker pull projects.packages.broadcom.com/gos_cert/ansible-vsphere-gos-validation:latest
$ docker run -it --privileged projects.packages.broadcom.com/gos_cert/ansible-vsphere-gos-validation:latest

2. Launch testing in the started container following the steps in this section Steps to Launch Testing