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