If you run a homelab on Proxmox VE, you probably know the drill: you need "just one quick VM" to test something, and twenty minutes later you're still clicking through the UI — pick the template, set the disk, set the network, wait, SSH in, create a user, install a package... for a VM you might tear down tomorrow.
That friction is what pushed me to write a small Terraform module that clones a VM template and, optionally, applies a custom cloud-init (users, packages, runcmd) rendered from .tftpl files. Nothing fancy — just enough to turn "let me spin up a VM" back into a one-command thing.
What it does:
- Uses the
bpg/proxmoxprovider. - Cloud-init is opt-in — clone-only by default, one line to switch it on when you actually need custom setup.
- Templates in
cloud-init/*.tftplaccept custom variables via anextramap, so the same base template can serve different VM roles (there's aweb.yaml.tftplexample that installs nginx). - Outputs the VM's IP via the QEMU guest agent once it boots, so you're not hunting for it in the Proxmox UI.
cp terraform.tfvars.example terraform.tfvars
terraform init
terraform plan -out plans/test1.tfplan
terraform apply plans/test1.tfplan
Repo (with setup steps and the exact Proxmox API token permissions you'll need): https://github.com/milyzc/proxmox-terraform-vms
If you're in the same boat — homelab, Proxmox, tired of the manual dance — I'd genuinely love feedback or PRs. It's a small project today, but happy to grow it (multi-VM, more distros) if it's useful to others too.
