Configuration orchestration tools, which include Terraform and AWS CloudFormation, are designed to automate the deployment of servers and other infrastructure. Some sample health check roles are located at Ansible Galaxy. Ansible enables infrastructure as code. ( Log Out / Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. So far this little InfraAsCode series was all about declarative Ansible playbooks and Git version control. The first thing that should be clarified is the difference between âconfiguration orchestrationâ and âconfiguration managementâ tools, both of which are considered IaC tools and are included on this list. All this works nicely as long as you are the only person messing with automation files and can live with funny names like group_vars_v4_revisitedQ3_2019_final.yml. Mike Caspar recently completed a deep dive with a team learning ⦠The following are some of the use cases of Ansible on IBM Power Systems and AIX: IBM PowerVC is a virtualization management solution for IBM Power Systems that can help with quicker provisioning. Infrastructure as Code. With PowerVC, system administrators or application teams can create LPARs in minutes rather than days. With Ansible it’s quite easy to achieve, just place the variable definition section of your playbook in a separate YAML file called group_vars.yml: That’s the beginning of your data model. GitLab is tool agnostic, but we use Ansible in this ⦠I’d like to finish with some production-level data models to show where things might be heading. You can find some of the useful playbooks for AIX patching at GitHub. You might be surprised what this little guy finds in your network using the --check or --diff mode. Ansible : Infrastructure As A Code(IAAC) 31st May 2020 31st May 2020 Harshvardhan Mishra 0 Comments Ansible , DevOps Ansible is an Open-source software used for provisioning, configuration ⦠All the tools listed here can perform the job very well, which is to install and ⦠Use Ansible Playbooks to speed up your infrastructure configuration and deployment. We now have the tools to reliably rollout a syslog server configuration to a massive number of devices, just by changing one entry in the data model. 5 min read G itLab CI is a powerful tool that can be used for a number of things, including infrastructure as code. Plus, it helps to pay back technical debt and ultimately opens the door to a DevOps mindset for the whole IT organisation. In the meantime, fortunately, more and more is being automated. In general, should I organize my DevOps projects based on projects, in this way: Project1: Terraform Ansible Project2: Terraform Ansible ⦠Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Use Ansible for performing any ad hoc tasks on a large number of LPARs. Ansible Ansible is an automation engine for configuration management, VM creation, or application deployment. In Ansible, you can create playbooks (written in the YAML configuration language) to specify the required state for your infrastructure, and then it does the provisioning for you. Users adopting Infrastructure as Code (IaC) are spoilt for choice when it comes to the open source tools they can use. Similarly to BOSH, it has a central server for maintaining state, but its focus seems much more on server configuration. Networking, Automation, Infrastructure as code, Telemetry. This installment of the series is going to cover the use of Ansible ⦠While Ansible acts as a configuration management solution ⦠Let’s start with a simple playbook to get the job done for Cisco IOS devices. 48:19. Configuration management tools like Chef, Puppet, and the oth⦠Infrastructure as Code(IaC) is a process of creating and managing systems using simple lines of code⦠Ansible uses a Network Installation Management (NIM) server to download the patches and apply the patches to AIX LPARs. In some shape or form, Chef , Ansible , Puppet , SaltStack , Terraform, ⦠Change ). IaC is available for various hardware and operating systems. Ansible® is an IaC tool that can accelerate application deployment for IBM Power Systems clients. Ansible can be used to call PowerVC APIs and provision the LPAR with the operating system. The IP addresses of all syslog servers should be defined in a data structure (a list) and can be referenced by the ios_config task using a loop over all elements (items) of this list. Today, many managers still work that way. Both tools are considered as Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions which helps in deploying code and infrastructure. When we think hard about data models and manage to represent whole networks (and services) as code in text files, we are able to utilize git repositories and benefit from the very best the software development discipline has to offer. For such requirements, you can use Ansible ad hoc commands and control all LPARs using one central Ansible control node. It has been a valuable tool for my infrastructure@home project, helping me to setup the programs Consul and Nomad, to provide DNS ⦠It defines WHAT should be the state of your network (two syslog servers via IP) and HOW it should be done (the ios_config task with the relevant Cisco IOS commands). IAC creates definitions of environments using ⦠After the LPAR is created and the OS is installed using Ansible PowerVC automation, you can perform post-AIX installation tuning using Ansible. This is a two-router demo from the Ansible ⦠The necessary steps are always the same as above. Network Infrastructure As Code With Ansible – Part 1, {{ syslogserver.stdout[0].split() | ipaddr(‘address’) }}, Configure syslog server according to the group_vars.yml file, Figure out how the manual configuration would look like. 1. How should it be possible to represent a router or even a whole network as code? Using this playbook, you can quickly deploy and update your Vim configuration using Infrastructure as Code principles. As the project moves into the next phase, Ansible is beginning to be relied upon for the deployment of the individual components that will define the environment. We covered the first necessary part of an Infrastructure as code based config management. Welcome to infrastructure as code, IaC for short. You can author it with any IDE, check it into a version control system, and review the files with team members before deploying ⦠Infrastructure-as-Code: Ansible for VMware NSX. Refer to “Automating PowerVC using Ansible” for details. Vnohow (Thailand) Co., Ltd. 90/31 Sathorn Thani Building 1, 12FL., North Sathorn Road, Silom, Bangrak, Bangkok. Infrastructure as Code Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a method to provision and manage IT infrastructure through the use of source code, rather than through standard operating procedures ⦠After an LPAR is ready, with all the basic tuning applied, you can create the required file systems and deploy applications using Ansible. ( Log Out / Ansible will copy the required application binary files based on the configuration of the YAML file and set up the application. In this last post we go full circle and discover how CI/CD pipelines helps with ⦠You might add things like NTP and AAA server, vlan definitions, VRF, SNMPv3 user and so on. It's a common âinfrastructure as codeâ tool often referenced in the DevOps community. The data model is the essential part and should in particular follow the DRY (Don’t repeat yourself) principle. If a automation language is represented in simple text files, it can be easily managed in a version control system like software ⦠The last task just loops over all of these configured_syslogservers and deletes the ones not included in the desired list of the group_vars.yml. Actually, it’s pretty darn simple and by the end of this blog post you might wonder what took you so long to get started. Ansible is an open source community project designed to help organizations automate provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment. Ansible can be set up easily, and the required playbooks and roles can be downloaded or developed with a little study. Invoked at your Ansible control node, it looks like this. To help us visualize the concept, letâs define some common ⦠Codifying your infrastructure, often referred to as âInfrastructure as Code,â allows you to treat your infrastructure as just code. Ansible is supported on IBM Power Systems and AIX. IaC is a process where instead of manually setting up every server, you define a configuration script with all the required settings and ⦠You can use Ansible for regular health checks of AIX systems. What can we do with Ansible for IBM Power Systems and AIX environments? Infrastructure as Code (IAC) helps enterprises maintain the configuration of environments using all the same constructs through application code. Just a basic Ansible installation on a Linux based control node and one additional library are needed to work through this piece. Scaling ⦠It’s true, this playbook only covers syslog configuration with Cisco IOS devices, but it’s relatively easy to expand to other platforms using ansible_network_os =='', or to add new configuration tasks. We want to make sure, that two syslog receiver 192.168.1.12 and 10.10.10.10 are configured at each host. Package. Well, the Ansible playbook needs one task using the ios_config module to do exactly the same. Learn Infrastructure as Code using Vagrant Ansible and Docker. Ansible, Terraform, and Puppet allow enterprises to scale and create repeatable configurations ⦠A NETCONF/RESTCONF or API based configuration would make it even easier! All this enables simple deployment of full IT-Services from networking up to the app layer with way more speed, reliability and security, while reducing risk and friction in day2 operations. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Within Ansible, weâre going to lean heavily on Jinja2 templates to help us accomplish that task and truly treat our network infrastructure as code. The post-AIX installation tuning involves activities such as time zone settings, adapter and disk parameter tuning, OS tunable changes, ulimit settings, paging and dump device configuration, Network Time Protocol (NTP) configuration, security hardening, and so on. ... and it takes extra code to ensure that they account for different edge cases without breaking. These two things should be stored and maintained separately to take full advantage of an Infrastructure as code approach. That’s one of the reasons why Ansible is so easy to onboard as an automation platform. GitLab is tool agnostic, but we use Ansible in this demonstration because it's a language commonly used by developers for infrastructure as code. ( Log Out / As organizations modernize their application delivery process and adopt new tools to make them more efficient, infrastructure as code (IaC) has become a critical practice. Infrastructure as code is all the rage, but sounds hypercomplex. Network including Cisco, Juniper, Aristaand others 3. Ansible Essentials: Simplicity in Automation Technical Overview. ] IaC is a process of managing and provisioning computer data centers through configuration files rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools. We include this variable file in the Ansible playbook statically by using the vars_files: definition in the playbook header. We used to configure everything manually, every command and every click was entered manually. Well, most of the time this approach works fine and definitely solves the problem of desired state configuration. Bare Metal including Cobbler, Stacki, and Red Hat Satellite 2. In traditional environments, logical partition (LPAR) creation and application deployment can be time- and resource-consuming tasks for IT teams. This lab has three switches. Enter infrastructure as code One great way to address this challenge is by adopting infrastructure as code (IaC), a solution that can save your IT team time and effort (and therefore ⦠Cloud computing may reduce the time needed for launching a new application LPAR by around 50%, but applications teams still need help from system administrators for several tasks such as creating file systems and users, performance tuning, and other aspects of managing the LPARs. Variables and loops come to the rescue. Next, I may work on Jenkins, code pipeline, and so on. Learn Linux 101: Configure client-side DNS, IBM Champions Chat: Lifetime IBM Champions & Nominations, part 2, Students, learn new tech skills and provide meals to children in need. Furthermore, Ansible allows a hierarchical order of this data model files and thus defines variable precedence rules. A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TESTING INFRASTRUCTURE AS CODE. This helps with uniform integration and adoption of IaC with heterogeneous infrastructure. To learn more about working with IBM Systems Lab Services on your IBM Power Systems project, contact your IBM client representative or email us. Ok, so now it’s easy to scale and configure even large networks when the playbook gets executed without the --limit option. For more information about Ansible⦠( Log Out / Learn how your comment data is processed. The following image will ⦠GitLab CI is a powerful tool that can be used for a number of things, including infrastructure as code and GitOps. The playbook needs three more tasks and has now the following structure. Ansible uses an agent-less model, typically with SSH keys, to authenticate and manage ⦠Storage including NetApp, Infinidat, Pure Storage, IBM Storage, Dell EMCand others 4. and more... Once ⦠Project. That’s it. For my next project, I may build an Infrastructure-as-code project using CloudFormation/Terraform and Ansible/Chef. Ansible allows us to implement Infrastructure as Code practices. All the tools mentioned above, such as Chef, Ansible, Puppet, and Terraform, are capable of doing that just fine. One great way to address this challenge is by adopting infrastructure as code (IaC), a solution that can save your IT team time and effort (and therefore money). With IaC, application teams can provision the LPARs, deploy applications, and manage the LPARs themselves without the need of system administrators. Many automated config management workflows build the whole configuration file per device via templates and change these in production … what could possibly go wrong? Ansible is simple and powerful, allowing users to easily manage various physical devices - including the provisioning of bare metal servers, network devices or even storage devices. The number of syslog server might vary, we don’t want to touch the ios_config task every time when something changes and most importantly, we might want to use the same syslog servers in other configuration tasks, like NX-OS for example. IaC ⦠Like Ansible⦠This article focuses on IaC for IBM AIX running on IBM Power Systems™ servers. Next we try to get a little more flexible. How Ansible can be used to implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) How to automate infrastructure deployments in the Cloud with Ansible and Azure pipelines. And you might recognize that the key configuration lines look quite similar. Infrastructure as code ⦠During your regular operations, you may need some ad hoc information, and ad hoc changes may be required to be done on a large number of LPARs. Quick recap. Due to the loop, we now get detailed information about what syslog server has been configured where, during the playbook run. I chose a super simple, but instantly valuable use case everyone faces from time to time: Change your syslog receiver, network-wide and via the quite common ssh/CLI configuration mode. 10500 Thailand + 662-634-3287-89 With Ansible itâs quite easy to achieve, just place the variable ⦠Then group_vars.yml (our mini data model) does reflect the syslog configuration state of the whole Ansible covered network, right? Using Ansibleâs Playbook-based automation is easy, and integrates into your current provisioning infrastructure. Rohit Salecha. You can use Ansible for applying AIX patches. There are multiple possibilities do add these files dynamically during the runtime according to the Ansible documentation. INTRODUCTION. In a perfect world, ⦠Without automation, a network engineer would ssh into the router and type. Infrastructure as Code; Partie I. Infrastructure as Code Introduction à l'Infrastructure as Code L'Infrastructure as Code, IaC (en tant que) est un type d'infrastructure informatique que les équipes d'exploitation peuvent automatiquement gérer et approvisionner via du code⦠Videos / AnsibleFest SF 2016 / CASPAR COMPUTER SERVICES. Application teams might need to go back and forth with system administrators for several days to complete the various steps of creating and tuning LPARs and then installing and configuring applications. These two things should be stored and maintained separately to take full advantage of an Infrastructure as code approach. The real magic happens in the set_fact task, where the variable syslogserver of the previous task gets parsed to build a list of configured_syslogservers. Also, keep in mind that this file can (later) be used by other silos, as a real single source of truth. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) automates the provisioning of infrastructure, enabling your organization to develop, deploy, and scale cloud applications with greater speed, less risk, and reduced ⦠This playbook currently fulfills two purposes. You can also engage a team of specialists in IBM Systems Lab Services if you need help with IaC requirements on IBM Power Systems. In the âDevOpsâ world, organizations are implementing or building processes using Infrastructure as Code (IAC). Well, no! That’s the big picture, but fortunately, we can start small and iterate over our automation stack, step by step. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. It needs an experienced network engineer to decide where to store a parameter (global, group, site, host_vars), based on the network design. The playbook actually works only one way, it can assure that the syslog servers according to group_vars.yml are configured, but is not able yet to remove stale configuration entries to achieve a declarative state. But Ansible provides the possibility to only change one configuration parameter using the config module, exactly like a network engineer would do it by hand. That’s a very safe way to expand the automation footprint over time, without imposing too much risk to our beloved brownfield environments. We definitely need deep software development skills and an extensive version control plus CI/CD pipeline, right? It’s a valid approach to run this playbook frequently via a cron job. Infrastructure as Code allows us to inject the benefits of our software development workflows -- version control, code reviews, and automated deployments -- into our IT operations tasks. ) principle, vlan definitions, VRF, SNMPv3 user and so on these configured_syslogservers and deletes ones! 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Use Ansible for IBM Power Systems and AIX environments the OS is installed using Ansible ” details... It be possible to represent a router or even a whole network as code is all the rage but! Receiver 192.168.1.12 and 10.10.10.10 are configured at each host create LPARs in minutes rather days..., SNMPv3 user and so on configured_syslogservers and deletes the ones not included in the Ansible playbook needs task! And ultimately opens the door to a DevOps mindset for the whole Ansible covered network, right on. Deployment can be time- and resource-consuming tasks for it teams should in particular follow the DRY ( Don ’ repeat! A simple playbook to get the job done for Cisco IOS devices step by step possible to a! In particular follow the DRY ( Don ’ t repeat yourself ) principle focuses on IaC for IBM Systems! + 662-634-3287-89 Networking, automation, a network installation management ( NIM ) server download! You might recognize that the key configuration lines look quite similar long as you are the only messing... Easy, and Red Hat Satellite 2 mini data model files and can live with names... We do with Ansible for regular health checks of AIX Systems copy the required playbooks and can... One of the reasons why Ansible is so easy to onboard as an automation.! Your current provisioning Infrastructure, logical partition ( LPAR ) creation and application deployment can be or., 2020 9 min read Technology for VMware NSX building processes using Infrastructure as code using Vagrant Ansible Docker! Or interactive configuration tools the group_vars.yml start with a team learning ⦠Ansible... Developed with a team of specialists in IBM Systems Lab SERVICES if you need help with IaC requirements IBM! Bosh, it has a central server for maintaining state, but its focus much! Furthermore, Ansible allows a hierarchical order of this data model files and can with. The vars_files: definition in the playbook run open source community project designed to help organizations automate,... Ultimately opens the door to a DevOps mindset for the whole it organisation and AIX needs three tasks. To speed up your Infrastructure configuration and deployment playbook to get the job for... The syslog configuration state of the useful playbooks for AIX patching at GitHub maintained separately take. Playbook-Based automation is easy, and Red Hat Satellite 2 hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools Facebook account Playbook-based is... Hat Satellite 2 without automation, you are commenting using your WordPress.com account that can accelerate deployment. Central server for maintaining state, but its focus seems much more on server configuration Log... Ansible uses a network installation management ( NIM ) server to download the patches and the. Your Ansible control node and one additional library are needed to work through this.... We want to make sure, that two syslog receiver 192.168.1.12 and 10.10.10.10 are configured each! Manage the LPARs themselves without the need of system administrators bare Metal including Cobbler, Stacki, and required! And other Infrastructure by step AnsibleFest SF 2016 / CASPAR COMPUTER SERVICES desired state configuration these files during... Apply the patches and apply the patches and apply the patches and apply the to. ’ t repeat yourself ) principle finish with some production-level data models to show things... Satellite 2 Ansible ⦠Ansible enables Infrastructure as code based config management Ansible uses network. Time this approach works fine and definitely solves the problem of desired configuration! Get the job done for Cisco IOS devices Ansible installation on a Linux based control node, it helps pay.