FOCUS Virtual Machinesy
OpenStack automation with Ansible T
Moinul Islam, Software engineer at the Trusted Security Solutions (TSS) Group of Analog Devices in Tampa, Florida, provides insight on an alternative approach to provisioning virtual machines aside from VMware managing Ansible;
his article demonstrates how Ansible Tower is one of the easiest ways to create, deploy and confi gure virtual machines
from OpenStack using playbooks. System performance, IT automation, deployments of complex systems and speed productivity are the key criteria in software development in regard to interacting with virtual machines. All these features are available in Ansible Tower, which have REST APIs to easily embed it into existing tools and processes. A secure portal where users can request new IT services and manage specifi c cloud and IT resources can be created using Ansible Tower as an open-source tool for automating application deployment and upgrades, as well as the confi guration of software for networking and security.
Why Ansible?
Ansible is a simple automation tool that can perfectly describe an IT application infrastructure. It’s easy to learn, self- documenting and doesn’t require a high-level computer science degree to use. Automation shouldn’t be more complex than the tasks it’s replacing. Hence, it is: § Simple:
• Readable automation
• No special coding skills needed • Tasks executed in order • Quick productivity § Powerful: • App deployment • Confi guration management • Workfl ow orchestration • App life-cycle orchestration § Agentless: • Agentless architecture • Uses OpenSSH and WinRM • No agents to exploit or update • Predictable, reliable and secure.
What Is Ansible Tower? Ansible Tower is a web-based user interface for managing Ansible. It centralises and controls Ansible infrastructure with a visual dashboard. It can be referred to as the hub for automation tasks. Ansible Tower is: § A web-based user interface for
8 September 2020 | Automation § It centralises and controls Ansible
infrastructure with a visual dashboard; § Provides REST API for Ansible; § Encompasses Ansible, which: • Is an open-source automation tool; • Is designed to be easy for anyone to understand and learn; • Does not require custom scripting or
code; • Provides automation engine; • Manages networks, infrastructure, operating systems; • Provides prebuilt modules for managing and confi guring of hosts (over 450);
• Provides an API based on Python; • Uses OpenSSH; • Provides automation and orchestration
through playbooks. What Is OpenStack?
OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage and networking resources throughout a data centre, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. It is an open-source project that provides an infrastructure-as-a- service platform to build cloud-aware applications, and it supports multiple hypervisors for provisioning and
Figure 1: Sample playbook
orchestrating the cloud. It can run multi-tier workloads or open-source development tools. End users can easily provision resources and support almost all the hypervisors including VMware ESXi, Xen and KVM.
Why OpenStack?
OpenStack easily integrates with Ansible Tower, VMware hypervisor and Hyper-V to utilise existing infrastructure. OpenStack and KVM hypervisor are free, but require confi guration by skilled administrators. OpenStack is an open-source platform for deploying, developing and building cloud platforms. It is a command line interface and it is powerful, with administration, API and RESTful web services, as well as web-based control panel controls. This open-source cloud software is used for managing computing (Nova), block volume storage (Cinder), virtual machine image service (Glance) and networking constructs (Neutron). OpenStack is a foundation that simplifi es not only the deployment process, but also the development, storage, networking, monitoring, management and applications. Hence, OpenStack is: • Open source: the technology is supported by a large community of developers; • Provides clients with value, effi ciency and agility;
• Comprised of modular, scaleable and
fl exible set of utilities; • Tried and tested by large businesses; • It off ers interoperability and is open-
source. APIs allow admins to manage hybrid IT environments without the additional overhead layer.
Ansible playbooks A playbook is a YAML fi le that describes a list of tasks to be performed against a set of hosts, defi ned in the Ansible inventory. A playbook is made up of one or more plays, which are used to group the tasks. It defi nes virtual machine names, the VMDK fi le, networking, IP addresses and scenario information. Playbooks are the basis for a really simple confi guration management and multimachine deployment system.
automationmagazine.co.uk
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