# Deploy Vms on random Datastores and Hosts from a list based on a vm name list

**URL:** <https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/deploy-vms-on-random-datastores-and-hosts-from-a-list-based-on-a-vm-name-list/57962>\
**Category:** Terraform\
**Tags:** vsphere\
**Created:** [September 5, 2023, 3:24pm UTC](https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/deploy-vms-on-random-datastores-and-hosts-from-a-list-based-on-a-vm-name-list/57962 "2023-09-05T15:24:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ffavre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@ffavre](https://discuss.hashicorp.com/u/ffavre)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2023, 3:24pm UTC](https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/deploy-vms-on-random-datastores-and-hosts-from-a-list-based-on-a-vm-name-list/57962/1 "2023-09-05T15:24:06Z")

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Hi all,

I’m struggling to find out the correct way to deploy new vms on vSphere.

I’ve defined in the variables.tf list of Datastore, Host and VM name :

```auto
variable "vm_names" {
  type = list(string)
  default = ["vm1", "vm2", "vm3", "vm4", "vm5"] # Liste de VMs
}

variable "datastores" {
  type = list(string)
  default = ["datastore1", "datastore2"] # Liste de datastores existants
}

variable "hosts" {
  type = list(string)
  default = ["host1", "host2", "host3"] # Liste d'hôtes existants
}

```

My issue is that i’m unable to loop on the lenght of var.vm\_names and randomnise the selection of datastore and host of each vm because i’ve more VM than I have Datastores and Hosts

Any idea on the way to do that ?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![apparentlymart](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/hashicorp/user_avatar/discuss.hashicorp.com/apparentlymart/32/702_2.png) [@apparentlymart](https://discuss.hashicorp.com/u/apparentlymart)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2023, 7:57pm UTC](https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/deploy-vms-on-random-datastores-and-hosts-from-a-list-based-on-a-vm-name-list/57962/2 "2023-09-07T19:57:15Z")

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You said “randomize” but I wonder if in practice it’s okay for the result to be deterministic but somewhat evenly spread.

If so, you can use [the `element` function](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/language/functions/element) to fetch an element using that function’s “wrap around” behavior, where indices greater than those directly in the list will be taken modulo the list length instead of returning an error:

```auto
element(var.datastores, index)

```

(where “index” is whatever expression returns the current index of `var.vm_names`.)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ffavre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@ffavre](https://discuss.hashicorp.com/u/ffavre)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2023, 9:46am UTC](https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/deploy-vms-on-random-datastores-and-hosts-from-a-list-based-on-a-vm-name-list/57962/3 "2023-09-08T09:46:55Z")

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Hi

Thanks for reply

I’ve finally find out the solution  
However we can’t do that for host, but no problem because host selection is automatic.

Here is what i’ve did :

```auto
data "vsphere_datastore" "ds" {
    datacenter_id = data.vsphere_datacenter.dc.id
    count = length(var.vsphere_datastores)
    name = var.vsphere_datastores[count.index]
  }

  resource "random_shuffle" "ds" {
    input = data.vsphere_datastore.ds.*.id
    result_count = length(var.vm_names)
    
  }
 
#Set VM parameteres
  resource "vsphere_virtual_machine" "Test" {
    count = length(var.vm_names)
    name = var.vm_names[count.index]
    num_cpus = 2
    memory = 4096
    guest_id = "ubuntu64Guest"
    resource_pool_id = data.vsphere_compute_cluster.cluster.resource_pool_id
    datastore_id = random_shuffle.ds.result[count.index]

```

So it only randomise the datastore selection from my list