☁ 🏠 ☁ Fluff, Happy Little Clouds at Home

Update: After reading more about the libvirt project, kcli (python), and virt-lightning (also python) projects I'm going to take a break from fluff at least until the Beginner Boost content is finished and I've completed my K8S certificaitons. I've decided all we need for all the Boost parts is VirtualBox and the VirtualBox extensions. In fact, fluff would rob people learning some great little scripting sessions to automated their preferred VM cloud configuration. This is also the reason free VirtualBox with extensions and Ubuntu server image is a no-brainer decision for beginners. Plus, people need to learn about making snapshots with VirtualBox and the Vbox CLI command tools. Also, cloud-init is not for beginners. When I return to fluff I want to rethink the entire thing from a libvirt perspective first so that we automatically support every single provider rather than a few specific ones.*

"It's docker-compose for cloud-init VMs."

• Support VMware Workstation Pro and VirtualBox
• Focus only on virtual hardware configuration
• Compliment Ansible for system configuration
• Cater to absolute beginners as well as pros
• Simplest possible CLI with optional web UI
• Local cloud VMs organized in $HOME/Fluff
• Bridged static IP network support only
• Highly opinionated defaults
• Only allow cloud-init images
• Secure shell into everything
• Batteries included

Prerequisites

Fluff is primarily designed to be run from any modern Windows or Mac computer. It will also run from most Linux desktop distros as well:

Installation

1. Install a terminal (Windows Terminal, iTerm2, etc.)
2. Install VMware Workstation Pro (recommended) or VirtualBox
3. Install qemu-img
4. Install fluff binary

Fluff will also run from most Linux

⚠️ Note Windows users do not need to setup WSL2 but it won't hurt.

First, you'll need to install a good terminal to make best use of your home local cloud virtual machines so that you can connect to them from ssh (which is installed by default on all major desktop operating systems these days).

Second, install one of the following industry standard desktop virtualization applications:

• VMware Workstation Pro (recommended)
• Oracle VirtualBox

Third, install qemu-img depending on your operating system. This allows fluff to convert between virtual machine images designed for the cloud (qcow2) into images that work with VMware (vmdk) or VirtualBox (vdi). (This application also has different licensing requiring it to be installed separately.)

And finally, install the fluff binary using any of the following methods:

If you have Go already installed:

go install github.com/rwxrob/fluff@latest

Otherwise, grab the binary for your computer and add put it someplace your computer will know to run it.

curl ...

Usage

Here are the main user-facing commands:

fluff help [COMMAND] - display help
fluff init           - create a starter fluff.yaml file
fluff lint           - check the fluff.yaml file for syntax and more
fluff up [FILE|URL]  - start a local cloud, display description
fluff down - stop local cloud VMs and save their state
fluff away - destroy and delete all local cloud VMs
fluff shot - take a "snapshot" of all local cloud VMs
fluff list - list all the local cloud VMs with name and IP
fluff copy - copy all local cloud VMs and config to target 

There are a number of other (hidden) commands that allow users to do specific things that are a part of the other main user commands:

fluff cache [URL]             - retrieve and cache distro image
fluff validate [PATH]         - validate a fluff.yaml file
fluff convert [PATH] [FORMAT] - convert target image to specified format
fluff iso [PATH]              - create a cloudinit.iso
fluff volume [MB] [FORMAT]    - create volume file of size and format
fluff ssh-config [INSTANCE]   - output ~/.ssh/config Host for instance

And a few debugging hidden commands:

fluff err  - prepare large detailed report of last error

And a few expected aliases:

fluff start   - up
fluff stop    - down
fluff off     - down
fluff vet     - lint
fluff destroy - away
fluff rm      - away
fluff snap    - shot
fluff ps      - list
fluff cp      - copy

Domain Model and Terminology

machine - specification of a virtual machine instance - a specific instance of a configured virtual machine
cloud - a collection of instances

Machine (Box) Specification Types

A machine consists of all the hardware specification information. Certain default specs are included within the binary while users may create their own in the specs.yaml file. Here are the current defaults:

machines:
  - name: alma8.server 
    cores: 2
    memory: 2048
    volumes:
      - size: 100 
    url: |
      https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/8/cloud/x86_64/images/AlmaLinux-8-GenericCloud-8.5-20211119.x86_64.qcow2
  - name: alma8.node
    base: alma8.server
    cores: 1

clouds:
  - name: basic
    description: |
      Simple control and three node mini-cloud suitable for testing
      basic endpoint architecture and applications such as Kubernetes
      installed with kubeadm. Default IPs: 192.168.132.10-13.
    instances:
      - name: control
        base: alma8.server 
        ip: 192.168.132.10
    group:
      - name: node           # node-1, node-2, node-3
        base: alma8.node
        count: 3
        startip: 192.168.132.11

Note that this exact YAML file is embedded in the Go binary.

Primary Use Cases

• Administrators, operators, cloud-native engineers, systems engineers to experiment for testing and learning purposes
• Experimenting and testing any cloud-init enabled virtual machine image
• Simulate specific, real-world networks and traffic within them including boding of interfaces, etc.

YAML Configuration Files

"Why not use Vagrant?"

❌ It's scope of use-cases is too large
❌ It's ancient (lots of technical debt)
❌ It adds layer of unnecessary abstraction
❌ It wasn't conceived with cloud-init in mind
❌ It doesn't play nice with WSL2
❌ It has a screwed up network model
❌ It isn't a single executable
❌ It's in Ruby