Launching Your Build
Once your canvas is designed — VLANs connected, machines placed, plugins configured — you’re ready to launch a build that creates real virtual machines from your blueprint.
Pre-Checks
Section titled “Pre-Checks”When you click Start Build in the top-right corner of the canvas, the system automatically runs pre-checks on your canvas configuration. Pre-checks look for potential issues like:
- Missing required plugin parameters
- Unconnected VLANs
- Configuration conflicts
Pre-check warnings are displayed in a modal. They are advisory — they won’t block your build, but you should review them before proceeding.
Build Configuration
Section titled “Build Configuration”After pre-checks, you’ll see the build configuration dialog with three options:
Continue on Error
Section titled “Continue on Error”When enabled, the build continues executing plugins even if one fails. This is useful during development when you want to see which plugins succeed and which need work, rather than stopping at the first failure.
Verbose Logging
Section titled “Verbose Logging”Enables maximum verbosity in Ansible logs. This produces much more detailed output in the build logs, which is helpful for debugging plugin issues. It also increases log volume significantly.
Snapshot Interval
Section titled “Snapshot Interval”How often the build system takes automatic snapshots of your VMs during the build. Options:
- 5 minutes — frequent snapshots, maximum safety
- 10 minutes — balanced (default)
- 20 minutes — less frequent, faster builds
- Custom — set any interval from 1 to 120 minutes
More frequent snapshots mean you can recover from failures with less lost work, but they add time to the build.
Starting the Build
Section titled “Starting the Build”Click Start Build in the configuration dialog to begin. The system will:
- Clone infrastructure VMs (Ansible Control Node, Network Router, APT Mirror, File Share)
- Clone your scenario VMs from their base templates
- Power on all infrastructure
- Power on your VMs
- Execute plugins in order
Once the build starts, the canvas transitions to active building mode where you can monitor progress in real time.
Requirements
Section titled “Requirements”You need the Launch Builds permission to start a build. Without it, you can design and configure your canvas freely but cannot deploy infrastructure.