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Using Ansible Automation Platform with Dell OpenManage Ansible Modules

Creating automation execution environments using the OpenManage Ansible Modules enables your automation teams to define, build, and update their automation environment themselves. Execution environments provide a common language to communicate automation dependency between automation developers, architects, and platform administrators.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to build the execution environment image, push the image to a registry, and then create the execution environment in Ansible Automation Platform.

Why Ansible Automation Platform over Galaxy

While Ansible Galaxy is good for testing the latest and greatest developer content, it is difficult to find the author who uploaded the content and if the content is supported. Whereas Ansible Automation Platform has bundles of modules, plugins, roles, and documentation from Red Hat. The Ansible Automation Platform provides the following benefits:

  • Red Hat Certified content.
  • The content can be directly used in your own Ansible playbooks.
  • Private Ansible Automation hub can be used within the organization to publish and collaborate.
  • Premium support enables you to get help directly from Red Hat if you have any issue with an official Red Hat collection or certified partner collection.
  • Red Hat subscription provides free and unlimited access to any content available.

Workflow

In this tutorial, you will learn how to:

  1. Build execution environment image.
  2. Use Ansible Runner to verify the execution environment (Optional).
  3. Upload the execution environment to a registry.
  4. Create execution environment in Ansible Automation Platform.

Build execution environment image

Build a image with the required Ansible collections and libraries, and then upload it to a registry of your choice. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a Podman image.

  1. Create the following files in your local directory:

    • execution-environment.yml
    • requirements.yml
    • requirements.txt

  2. For installing OpenManage collections and their dependencies, copy the metadata from the dellemc.openmanage GitHub repository.

    The following are the sample files:

    execution-environment.yml

    version: 3
dependencies:
  galaxy: requirements.yml
  python: requirements.txt
  system: bindep.txt

    We can modify the execution environment file to configure as per your requirement based on the guidelines mentioned here

    requirements.yml

    collections:
  - dellemc.openmanage
  - ansible.utils
  - ansible.windows

    Note: The content of the requirements.yml can be found here

    requirements.txt

    omsdk
netaddr>=0.7.19

    Note: The content of the requirements.txt can be found here

  3. Build the Podman image using the following syntax:

    ansible-builder build -f <path>/execution-environment.yml --container-runtime=<container> -c build_context --tag <container.io>/<org_name or username>/<imagename>:<tag>

    In this tutorial, the following command is used to build the Docker image with the name "execution-environment".

    $ ansible-builder build -f execution-environment.yml --container-runtime=podman -c build_context --tag quay.io/delluser/dell-openmanage-ee:<tag>

podman build -f context/Containerfile -t quay.io/delluser/dell-openmanage-ee context
Complete! The build context can be found at: /context

Use Ansible Runner to verify the execution environment

Note: Using Ansible Runner to verify the execution environment is an optional step.

Prerequisite

Ensure to install Ansible Runner. For details on how to install Ansible Runner, see https://ansible-runner.readthedocs.io/en/stable/install/.

To verify the image using the Ansible Runner, do the following:

  1. Create a folder structure as shown below:
runner-example/
├── inventory
│   └── hosts   
└── project
    └── testplaybook.yml
  1. Create a host file with the following entries:
[idrac]
192.168.0.1

[idrac:vars]
ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3.9
user=user
password=password
  1. Create a playbook.
- name: Get system inventory
  hosts: idrac
  gather_facts: false

  tasks:
    - name: Get system inventory.
      dellemc.openmanage.idrac_system_info:
        idrac_ip: "{{ inventory_hostname  }}"
        idrac_user: "{{ user }}"
        idrac_password:  "{{ password }}"
        validate_certs: false
      delegate_to: localhost
  1. Run the playbook using the following command:
ansible-runner run --process-isolation --process-isolation-executable podman --container-image quay.io/delluser/dell-openmanage-ee -p sysinfo.yml ./runner-example/ -v
No config file found; using defaults

PLAY [Get system inventory] ****************************************************

TASK [Get system inventory.] ***************************************************

ok: [192.168.0.1] => { ..sysdetails..}
META: ran handlers
META: ran handlers

PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
192.168.0.1               : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

After the execution, a complete trace of execution information is saved in a directory structure as shown below:

# tree runner-example/
runner-example/
├── artifacts
│   └── 53810baa-15de-4dd6-93a1-35a28eb89070
│       ├── ansible_version.txt
│       ├── collections.json
│       ├── command
│       ├── env.list
│       ├── fact_cache
│       ├── job_events
│       │   ├── 1-592da7d5-b64f-4121-a91f-b33f28f6b0da.json
│       │   ├── 2-0242ac11-0007-b479-84c9-000000000006.json
│       │   ├── 3-0242ac11-0007-b479-84c9-000000000008.json
│       │   ├── 4-6d132edf-994c-4bf4-b9b2-dd6fa6ba834f.json
│       │   ├── 5-22b7e7a4-5244-4d3c-bbb7-395980feaee1.json
│       │   └── 6-c7e089be-6494-4b6e-8379-cf435e108aa6.json
│       ├── rc
│       ├── status
│       ├── stderr
│       └── stdout
├── inventory
│   └── hosts
└── project
└── sysinfo.yml

Upload the execution environment to a registry

Now that you have built the image, you can upload the execution environment image to a registry. The following steps describe how to upload the image to a Docker registry. You can upload the image to a registry of your choice (https://quay.io or https://docker.io).

  1. Log in to quay.io.
podman login quay.io
  1. To view the list of images, run the following command:
podman image list

Output:

REPOSITORY                                      TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED          SIZE
quay.io/delluser/dell-openmanage-ee             latest    6ea6337881f5   36 seconds ago   908MB
<none>                                          <none>    bab8f0c1f372   3 hours ago      959MB
<none>                                          <none>    26e61b6f31b6   3 hours ago      779MB
  1. Upload the image to the repository using the following command:
podman push quay.io/delluser/dell-openmanage-ee

Output:

Using default tag: latest
The push refers to repository [quay.io/delluser/dell-openmanage-ee]
6a938007b4eb: Pushed
c1a7a8b69adb: Pushed
75f55eeed6f1: Pushed
7da4273e9d6b: Pushed
d8672b46fe52: Layer already exists
daf6e68722b8: Layer already exists
e258e2d51ae2: Layer already exists
134616f736b1: Layer already exists
34ac022ee9b6: Layer already exists
e7423a18eff2: Layer already exists
4d851e75ba42: Layer already exists
38adeed967d9: Layer already exists
78fc855ac59c: Layer already exists
d0f9b1e225dd: Layer already exists
5d4daec00137: Layer already exists
dd423f7aa20e: Layer already exists
1ce7e8b08eb8: Layer already exists
5fa5c1c78a8e: Layer already exists
e0808177f5c4: Layer already exists
aadc47c09f66: Layer already exists
101e6c349551: Layer already exists
latest: digest: sha256:7be5110235abf72e0547cac016a506d59313addefc445d35e5dff68edb0a9ad6 size: 4726
                                          <none>    26e61b6f31b6   3 hours ago      779MB

Create execution environment in Ansible Automation Platform

Now that you uploaded the image to a registry, you can now create the execution environment in Ansible Automation Platform.

Add execution environment

  1. Log in to Ansible Automation Platform.
  2. On the navigation pane, click Administration > Execution Environments.
  3. On the Execution Environments page, click Add.
  4. On the Create new execution environment page, enter the following details, and click Save.
    • Name: Enter a name for the execution environment (required).
    • Image: Enter the image name (required). The image name requires its full location (repo), the registry, image name, and version tag
    • Pull: From the Pull drop-down list, select Only pull the image if not present before running.
    • Description: optional.
    • Organization: optionally assign the organization to specifically use this execution environment. To make the execution environment available for use across multiple organizations, leave this field blank.
    • Registry credential: If the image has a protected container registry, provide the credential to access it.

Create Projects

A Project is a logical collection of Ansible playbooks.

  1. On the navigation pane, click Resources > Projects.
  2. On the Projects page, click Add.
  3. On the Create New Project page, do the following, and click Save.
    • From the Source Control Credential Type drop-down list, select the source control type. For example, you can select "GIT".
    • In the Source Control URL, specify the source control URL. That is your repository link.

Create Credential Types

This tutorial uses a custom credential type. You can create credential types depending on your data center environment. For more information, see Credential Types.

To create a credential type:

  1. On the navigation pane, click Administration > Credential Types.
  2. On the Credential Types page, click Add.
  3. On the Create Credential Types page, enter the name, and then specify the Input configuration and Injector configuration.
  4. Click Save.

This tutorial uses a custom credential type. The following are the input configuration and injector configuration used in this tutorial.

Input configuration:

fields:
  - id: username
    type: string
    label: Username
  - id: password
    type: string
    label: Password
    secret: true
required:
  - username
  - password

Injector configuration:

extra_vars:
  user: '{{ username }}'
  password: '{{ password }}'

Create Credentials

  1. On the navigation pane, click Resources > Credentials.
  2. On the Credentials page, click Add.
  3. On the Create New Credential page, enter the name of the credential and select the credential type.
  4. Click Save.

Note: In this tutorial, the custom credential type that we created in the section Create Credential Types is used.

Create Inventories

  1. On the navigation pane, click Resources > Inventories.
  2. On the Inventories page, click Add.
  3. On the Create New Inventory page, enter the details and click Save.
  4. Add Groups and Hosts to the inventory.

Create Job Templates

  1. On the navigation pane, click Resources > Templates.
  2. On the Templates page, click Add and select the new job template.
  3. On the Create New Job Template page, enter the name, inventory, project, execution environment, playbook, and credentials.
  4. Click Save.
  5. To run the template, on the Details page, click Launch.

To check the job status, on the navigation pane, select Views > Jobs. The following is a sample output in JSON.

PLAY [Get system inventory] ****************************************************

TASK [Get system inventory.] ***************************************************

ok: [192.168.0.1] => { ..sysdetails..}
META: ran handlers
META: ran handlers

PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
192.168.0.1               : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

Troubleshoot

You can add an Ansible python interpreter to a Template or Inventory.

ansible_python_interpreter: /usr/bin/python<version>

ansible_python_interpreter: /usr/bin/python3.9

Documentation references