Lab in a Box

Introduction

This documentation will explain how to setup a lab environment for ansible development
on a single computer with Oracle virtualbox as host for the complete environment.
In this documentation we discuss an environment that matches an Enterprise environment
as close as possible.

My goal with this setup was to be fully self contained, no need for external connections
to develop, test and deploy a linux platform. Its your choice to use an external git, like
GitHub or a corporate GIT implementation, but your will be dependant of a network connection
for this. I wanted to be able to work during commutes, where there is no internet connection
availlable.

As a deployment with ansible enviroment depends heavily on DNS, so we need to add one to the lab environment. We use the repository server for that, since an apache server will not overload the system. In the infrastructure_vbox code, the newly deployed hosts will be added to the deployment server. For the other machines, the DNS server takes care of business.

I am assuming here, that you have some knowledge of linux and the distribution you want to
use. Not everything will be explained 'to the bone'....
For more detail, RTFM... its in the links page

You should be comfortable working with a git implementation.

Be aware that most of the components discussed here are licensed, for most of these there are
free alternatives, which we will mention, but not discuss, except for the repository server
which can act as an alternative for satellite.
If You want to use those alternatives, there is lots of documentation out there...
Links Page

Hardware requirements (minimum):

Creating a Redhat Enterpise environment in a box is resource intensive, so expect to spent
some money in buying hardware for this.

Your system needs to meet the following requirements: * 64GB memory (more is better) * 1 TB SSD dedicated disk (again, more is better) * 4 core CPU * virtualization support

Software requirements:

In this documentation we will run on Windows, but this can be setup on Linux as well.

Required software: * Windows 10 (Home) or better * Oracle VirtualBox 7.0.6 or better * Oracle Virtualbox Extension Pack v7.0.6 or better (equal to Virtualbox) * HashiCorp Vagrant 2.3.4 or better