Introduction Ansible & Ansible Tower
Walter Brunelli Solution Architect Infrastructure
MariaDB Roadshow 24.May 2016 Basel CH
Agenda
• What is Ansible ?
• Ansible Core
• Ansible Tower
• Demo
WHYANSIBLEDWASCREATED?
• Open Source Project started in 2012 by Michael De Haan (cobbler creator)
• Because existing Config Management projects were too complicated
• Target : Eliminate complexity to manage IT environments
WHATISANSIBLE?
A radical simple IT AUTOMATION engine for repeating jobs!
• Configuration-, Orchestration and Deployment- Management Framework
How ?
• Agentless and with Playbooks
For whom?
• Operators, Administrators, Developers
Products
• Ansible Core + Ansible Tower
Nr 1 OpenSource project for Automation
Principles of Ansible
SUPPORTEDCLIENTPLATFORMS
Linux • RedHat/SuSe/Debian/Ubuntu/BSD/MacOSX
Various Windows OS
Unix • Solaris/AIX/HP-UX
Network Devices ans Load Balancers • Cisco/Juniper/Dell/F5/Arista/A10/HP/PaloAlto
Databases • MariaDB/Oracle/Postgres
WHATISANSIBLE?
A radical simple IT AUTOMATION engine for repeating jobs!
• Configuration-, Orchestration and Deployment- Management Framework
How ?
• Agentless and with Playbooks
For whom?
• Operators, Administrators, Developers
Products
• Ansible Core + Ansible Tower
WHYISAUTOMATIONSOIMPORTANT?
• Stability • Jobs are always executed the exactly same way
• Time saving • By delegating jobs to operations
• Compliance • Stick to defined company and/or ITIL processes
• Auditing
ANSIBLEISIDEMPOTENT
IDEMPOTENCE
Is the property of an operations in mathematics and computer science that can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the initial application.
ANSIBLEISIDEMPOTENT
IDEMPOTENCE
Is the property of an operations in mathematics and computer science that can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the initial application.
Ansible Core
WHATISANSIBLECORE?
• Community version of Ansible
• No support
• Important Features (Auditing, Job Scheduling, Role Based Access Control) missing
• Not ideal for Production Environment
• Not available in RedHat repos, Only external open-source, Eg. EPEL Fedora repos
Architecture
THEINVENTORYFILE
ExecuConExamples
Playbook
Ansible Tower
KEYADVANTAGEOFANSIBLETOWER
• Web-based UI
• Cloud Integration (Managing Amazon, Rackspace, MS Azure)
• Compliance: Reporting + Auditing
• Every job run is logged and can be traced.
• Role Based Access Control
• Separation of access rights.
• Delegation of tasks, Eg. Recurring jobs to Operating
• REST API
• All Functionalities are accessible over the API
• Monitoring
• Send out Alarm (Email etc.) if a job fails or if a config is found to be wrong
MOREFEATURESOFANSIBLETOWER
• Job Scheduling
• Integrates with LDAP, AD and IDM
• Multi-Organization
Availability
• Available in rhel-7-server-extras-rpms Repository
• Current version is 2.4.4
ANSIBLETOWERUserInterface
Ansible Tower Use-Cases
Almost very repeatable and programmable Process :
• Automated Application and Service Deployment
• Automated Add/Removal of customers/users in your IT environment,
• Automated patching of servers
• Rolling updates of your IT environemnt
• Run jobs on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis
Ansible Tower Use-Case Example
TOWEREdiCons
Good Links to start with Ansible
• Documentation
docs.ansible.com
• Get started
docs.ansible.com/intro_getting_started.html
• Playbooks :
galaxy.ansible.com
github.com/ansible
DEMO Ansible Tower
Thank you !
Walter Brunelli Solution Architect Infrastructure
March 2016