[badrogger]

This pull request introduces a comprehensive Ansible-based solution for provisioning and managing bare-metal KVM virtual machines (VMs) for SKALE node deployment. It adds new playbooks, roles, and documentation to automate VM lifecycle management (creation, configuration, and destruction), making it possible to run node infrastructure on self-hosted servers as an alternative to cloud providers.

The most important changes are:

Bare-metal KVM VM provisioning support:

• Added a new Ansible playbook (skale-nodes/ansible/vms.yaml) to automate the creation, configuration, and destruction of KVM VMs on user-provided servers, including first-boot handling and cloud-init waits.
• Introduced a new vms role with tasks for planning, SSH key management, host preparation (KVM/libvirt setup), VM creation, and destruction (roles/vms/tasks/*.yaml). This includes checks for KVM availability, network configuration, storage setup, and image downloading. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Configuration and customization:

• Added a comprehensive set of default variables for VM and server configuration in roles/vms/defaults/main.yaml, allowing customization of CPU, RAM, disk sizes, network interfaces, and SSH keys.

Integration and documentation:

• Updated the README.md with detailed instructions for using the new bare-metal KVM provisioning features, including inventory setup, playbook usage, and customization tips. [1] [2]
• Modified the base.yaml playbook to exclude KVM host servers from node provisioning, preventing accidental configuration of the hypervisor as a node.

Cloud-init and network configuration:

• Added Jinja2 templates for cloud-init (meta-data.j2, user-data.j2, network-config.j2) to automate VM initialization, static IP assignment, and SSH key setup. [1] [2] [3]

These changes provide a robust, flexible foundation for running SKALE node infrastructure on bare-metal servers using KVM virtualization, with full automation for VM lifecycle and configuration.