Provision a SoftLayer server from vagrant

Prerequisites

In addition to the prerequisites above, you will also require the vagrant-softlayer plugin. Additionally, the following one-time setup steps must be performed:

• Create a .softlayer file in the project root, containing your personal SoftLayer settings for:

  • api_key - your SoftLayer API key
  • user_name - Your SoftLayer user name
  • ssh_key - The identifying string of your SSH public key stored in SoftLayer (e.g., ‘John Public Key’). Use the slcli sshkey list command to look at the keys loaded in the account.

  Note that the Vagrantfile currently assumes that the corresponding private key is stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa, on the vagrant workstation

{
  "api_key": "api-key",
  "username": "sl_user_name",
  "ssh_key": "stored_ssh_key_entry_name",
  "datacenter": "wdc01"
}

• Create a metadata.json file with the following contents:

{
    "provider": "softlayer"
}

• Create the SoftLayer ‘box’ that includes the metadata file and install into Vagrant: tar cvzf softlayer.box metadata.json ; vagrant box add --name softlayer softlayer.box

• Create a vagrant file with the softlayer provider settings included:

sl_user_data_file = File.join(File.dirname(File.expand_path(__FILE__)), '.softlayer')
sl_user_data = JSON.parse(File.open(sl_user_data_file).read, :symbolize_names => true)

config.vm.provider :softlayer do |sl, config_override|
  config_override.vm.box = 'softlayer'
  config_override.ssh.username = 'root'
  config_override.ssh.private_key_path = [ File.expand_path("~/.ssh/id_rsa") ]

  sl.domain = "example.com"
  sl.hostname = "vagrant"
  sl.start_cpus = 2
  sl.max_memory = 4096
  sl.operating_system = 'UBUNTU_LATEST'

  sl_user_data.each do |k, v|
    sl.send("#{k}=", v)
  end
end

Deploy

Run the following:

vagrant up --provider=softlayer

This will spin up a new VM in SoftLayer. You can vagrant ssh, vagrant destroy, etc. as normal.