Automate Proxmox VM Creation With Cloud-Init

This post provides step by step instructions for you to automate proxmox VM creation with cloud-init.
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This post gives you step-by-step instructions of how to automate proxmox VM creation. I’ll use ubuntu as an example.

Overview

The overall strategy is to use the ubuntu cloud image to create a Proxmox VM template, and attach a cloud-init disk to it. After that, we can clone the template to create new VM, and new VM will automatically bootstrap itself, e.g., changing the hostname.

Prepare The Ubuntu Cloud Image

Use the following commands to prepare the ubuntu cloud image:

# Create a new directory for our image building.
mkdir ubuntu-cloud-image
cd ubuntu-cloud-image

# Download the cloud image.
wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/focal/current/focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.img

# Resize the image to 16GB. Feel free to change it to your desired size.
qemu-img resize focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.img 16G

Prepare The Proxmox VM Template

Then, we prepare the Proxmox VM template with the following steps.

Create A Temporary VM

# Create a VM with the following configuration:
# * vmid: 1000 (feel free to change this)
# * memory: 4GB
# * network: attached to bridge vmbr0
qm create 1000 --name ubuntu-focal-template --memory 4096 --net0 virtio,bridge=vmbr0

Attach The Ubuntu Cloud Image

# Attach the ubuntu cloud image onto the VM.
# Note that here ssd is my storage name. You'll need to replace it with yours.
qm importdisk 1000 focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.img ssd

# Make the attached disk scsi0.
qm set 1000 --scsihw virtio-scsi-pci --scsi0 ssd:vm-1000-disk-0

# Set scsi0 as the first boot device.
qm set 1000 --boot c --bootdisk scsi0

Create A Cloud-init Drive

# Create a cloud-init drive.
qm set 1000 --ide2 ssd:cloudinit

# Configure your cloud-init drive. Replace the username and password for your case.
qm set 1000 --ciuser swe --cipassword swe-passwd --ipconfig0 ip=dhcp

Customize Your Image

This step is optional, but this is a wonderful time for you to customize your image. You can start the VM and make the changes and then shut it down.

Highly suggest that you install mdns with the following commands, if you are running Proxmox in a LAN

sudo apt update
sudo apt install avahi-daemon

because you’ll be able to access your VMs using DNS name <your-vm-name>.local.

Convert The VM Into A Template

# Convert the VM into a template.
qm template 1000

Create VM

# Create a VM using the template, and set the name to ubuntu-vm1.
qm clone 1000 1101 --full --name ubuntu-vm1

# Create another VM using the template, and set the name to ubuntu-vm2.
qm clone 1000 1102 --full --name ubuntu-vm2

To access these VMs, you can do

# Use the following command to access ubuntu-vm1 if you have mdns included in your template, and you are within the same LAN as ubuntu-vm1.
ssh swe@ubuntu-vm1.local

# Use the following command to access ubuntu-vm2 if you have mdns included in your template, and you are within the same LAN as ubuntu-vm2.
ssh swe@ubuntu-vm2.local