Terraform KVM Provisioner (TKP)

Terraform(Infrastructure as Code) to provison KVM virtual machines.

📝 Table of Contents

• About
• Getting Started
• Usage
• Contributing
• Authors
• Acknowledgments

🧐 About

This project automates the provisioning of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) virtual machines using Terraform (Infrastructure as Code), supporting multi-OS deployments with flexible networking configurations.

Key Features

• ✅Multi-VM Provisioning on Multi KVM host
  Deploy multiple virtual machines with customized resources (CPU, RAM, disk) in a single operation
• ✅Cross-OS Support
  Simultaneously provision Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and other distributions
• ✅Dual Networking Modes
  🛡️ NAT - Isolated VMs with outbound internet access
  🌉 Bridge - Direct LAN connectivity for production-like networking
• ✅Infrastructure as Code
  Version-controlled configurations using Terraform's declarative syntax
• ✅Cloud-Init Integration
  Automated instance initialization (users, SSH keys, packages)

🏁 Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes. See usage for notes on how to deploy the project on a live system.

Prerequisites

• j2cli is required to install and render main.tf.j2 template file.

sudo apt install j2cli

• Terraform is required to install.

1. Download Terraform Binary, latest version preferred

LATEST_VERSION=$(
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/hashicorp/terraform/releases/latest \
| grep tag_name \
| cut -d '"' -f 4 \
| sed 's/^v//'
)
wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/${LATEST_VERSION}/terraform_${LATEST_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip

2. Unzip and Install

sudo unzip terraform_*.zip -d /usr/local/bin/

3. Set Execute Permissions

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/terraform

4. Verify Installation:

terraform --version

🎈 Usage

General usage

git clone https://github.com/easycodesnipper/terraform-kvm-provisioner.git

cd terraform-kvm-provisioner

chmod +x terraform-init.sh

export TF_VAR_libvirt_uris='["qemu:///system", "qemu+ssh://<user>@<remote-host>/system"]' 
# replace placeholders with yours, multiple kvm hosts supported
# `qemu:///system` format for localhost
# `qemu+ssh://<kvm_user>@<kvm_host>/system` format for remote host

./terraform-init.sh 
# This custom initialization script will auto-generate main.tf and install multiple providers with local modules.

# If remote KVM host(s) found in `TF_VAR_libvirt_uris` variable, ensure SSH connection works fine.

# Generate ssh keys
ssh-keygen

# Copy ssh public key to remote
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub <kvm_user>@<kvm_host>

# Test ssh connection
ssh <kvm_user>@<kvm_host> hostname

# Start ssh agent
eval $(ssh-agent)

# Add ssh private key
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

terraform apply

Override available variables

# Using variables
terraform apply \
-var="<key1>=<value1>" \
-var="<key2>=<value2>"

or
# Using .tfvars file
terraform apply \
-var-file=custom.tfvars

or
# Using multiple .tfvars files
terraform apply \
-var-file=<(cat custom1.tfvars custom2.tfvars)

• Attention: By default terraform.tfvars and *.auto.tfvars files will be automatically loaded

• For more variables, refer to variables.tf for definition and terraform.tfvars for usage

Alternatively running in docker

# Build docker image
docker build \
--build-arg USER_ID=$(id -u) \
--build-arg GROUP_ID=$(id -g) \
-t terraform-kvm-provisioner .

# Docker run
docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/app \
-v ~/.ssh:/home/tfuser/.ssh \
terraform-kvm-provisioner apply

✍️ Authors

• @easycodesnipper - Idea & Initial work

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.

🎉 Acknowledgements

• References