controller_configuration VS Ansible

infra.controller_configuration 2.5.1 has been released. This Ansible collection allows for easy interaction with an AWX or Ansible Controller server via Ansible roles using the AWX/Controller collection modules.

The controller_configuration collection version 2.4.0 has been released.

The Infra config as Code collection group will have a Public Office hours meeting on May 11th at 9am EST/1pm UTC. Details here.

one thing is to play to what you know. Also know that collections can be roles, modules, or both. A few biased collections to look at to see the difference would be infra.controller_configuration - a set of roles to implement either the awx.awx collection or ansible.controller collection for doing configuration as code.

multiple collections with grouped roles, then playbooks to execute those roles as needed. You can also do role include like dispatch here to make it more flexible.

The infra collections have had recent updates: * infra.ah_configuration 1.1.0 Automation hub and galaxy_ng configuration. Majorly improved testing and as a result of fixes all modules and roles work on the last 3 versions of galaxy_ng and Automation Hub. * infra.controller_configuration 2.2.5 Various fixes and additions and improvements to collection, including methods to export configuration files from controller to be used by the collection. * infra.ee_utilities 2.0.6 Updated several bugs and add ability to use types in collection requirements for building execution environments

All of the collections in this group have recently released changes. This includes: * infra.controller_configuration 2.1.9 released to be compatible with recently added AWX changes. Changelog here. * infra.ah_configuration 0.9.2 Automation hub and galaxy_ng configuration. Fixed various major errors, including a major publishing error. Changelog here. * infra.ee_utilities 2.0.1 Updated to add several use cases to Execution Environment Creation. * infra.aap_utilities 2.2.2 Update to OCP installer to allow individual components.

For the server configuration, its on the kubernetes side, however for the AWX configuration of projects, job templates, credentials and the like is the redhat_cop.controller_configuration collection. It uses the awx.awx collection or the ansible.controller configuration to interact with the API to manage things in AWX. The collections are built to work with Ansible Automation Controller, but 99.9% of the time its going to work with AWX.

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.