ansible.utils VS Ansible

We're happy to announce the following networking collection updates: * ansible.utils 2.8.0 has been released with new features (changelog) * cisco.iosxr 4.0.3 has been released with bugfixes (changelog) * cisco.nxos 4.0.1 has been released with bugfixes (changelog) * junipernetworks.junos 4.1.0 has been released with new features (changelog)

The ipaddr filters are broken in ansible.netcommon 2.6.0 release as we have recently migrated ipaddr filters from ansible.netcommon to ansible.utils. We have released utils 2.5.2 and netcommon 2.6.1 which fixed these two issues (ansible.netcommon#375, ansible.utils#148). For the FQDN issue, the ansible-core team has already merged the fix. This fix will be available in the March 28th release, which means that users of non fqdn ipaddr filters can use the old netcommon collection version 2.5.1 as a workaround until the next ansible-core release (March 28th) by the core-team. For fqdn ipaddr filters, users can use the latest versions of any of ansible.netcommon (2.6.1) or ansible.utils (2.5.2).

We hope you'll enjoy part1 and part2, and take a look at the collection and source repo where we'd love to hear your suggestions on how to improve the collection.

Also handy for this and other IP related tests, the Ansible.utils collection https://github.com/ansible-collections/ansible.utils /u/CertifiedKnowNothing

See: https://www.ansible.com/blog/using-new-ansible-utilities-for-operational-state-management-and-remediation https://github.com/ansible-collections/ansible.utils/blob/main/plugins/sub_plugins/cli_parser/ttp_parser.py

Also, I've not done it this way, but I believe this could be short-cut even further using: https://github.com/ansible-collections/ansible.utils/blob/main/plugins/sub_plugins/cli_parser/ttp_parser.py#L23-L28

Ansible is an open-source IT automation tool that simplifies application deployment, cloud provisioning, and configuration management across diverse environments. It uses a declarative language to describe the desired state of the system, and then takes the necessary actions to achieve that state. Ansible has become incredibly popular due to its simplicity, agentless architecture, and extensive community support. Document: ansible.com, ansible basics

Ansible v2.16

Ansible is a tool used to help manage software automation processes, configuration management across machines, deployment as well as remote execution of commands and scripts. In sports, Ansible operates as the coach of your team by providing strategies (playbooks), and actions, and ensuring the smooth execution of tasks across your infrastructure, just like a coach guides and directs players (Servers)during a game.

They support for-if from python, too: https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/3.1.x/templates/#loop-f... but I haven't tried the "recursive" keyword to know if ansible supports that. I say "ansible supports that" because they don't just drop jinja2 into ansible and call it a draw, they have a bunch of custom execution integrations: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.16.3/lib/ansible/...

To manage a VM, you can use something as simple as just manual actions over SSH, or can use tools like Ansible, Hashicorp's Packer and Terraform or other automations. For an app where there is minimal load and security/reliability concern, VMs are still a great option that provide a lot of value for the buck

In this article's context, it is simply a tool that provides a declarative way to automate your machine/OS to configure the development machine as you want (install package, modify the configuration, etc). Examples of these tools are Ansible, Puppet, etc.

Now we're getting more tangential, but for years, Ansible releases were named for Van Halen songs (see old Changelog here: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v1.8.4/CHANGELOG.md)

In the lab to follow, we'll quickly provision a 3-node kubeadm cluster (1 master, 2 workers) on the cloud provider of your choice using an automation stack comprised of OpenTofu and Ansible, then deploy Rook Ceph using the official Helm charts and confirm that we are now able to successfully create CSI volume snapshots from PVCs by reusing the MinIO example from our last article.