Extending Ansible - Ansible Benelux meetup - Amsterdam 11-02-2016

Extending AnsibleWhen you want some more of your favorite tool

Ansible Benelux meetup, 11-02-2016Amsterdam, Sentia

Pavel Chunyayev

@PavelChunyayev

Amsterdam

Levi9 HQAmsterdam – 2005

25 people

Novi Sad

SerbiaNovi Sad – 2005

320+ people

Zrenjanin

SerbiaZrenjanin– 2014

30+ people

Iasi

RomaniaIasi – 200780+ people

Kiev

UkraineKiev – 2008130+ people

@PavelChunyayev

Electronic Retail

DigitalMarketing

Traffic and Transport

Software Services

@PavelChunyayev

Customer satisfaction 2015

• 4th year great results in Outsourcing Performance study

• 2015: 100% customer recommendation scoreExcellent trust score

@PavelChunyayev

About me• 12 years of IT experience• Lived and worked in Ukraine and Estonia • Moved a year and half ago to the Netherlands

• Learning Dutch• Love cycling

• De Hollandse 100 - https://www.dehollandse100.nl/actie/pavel-chunyayev• Alpe d’HuZes - http://deelnemers.opgevenisgeenoptie.nl/levi9

Continuous Delivery

* I had to talk about Continuous Delivery shortly. I’m Continuous Delivery Architect after all.

Safely, rapidly and predictably deliver new features to production

@PavelChunyayev

Continuous Delivery

• Faster time to market

• How many deployments a day?

• Time between committing line of code and running in

production

It’s not only about speed

@PavelChunyayev

It’s not only about speed•Right process to support continuous feature delivery,

improvements and learning.

•Proper testing to be able to deliver at high speed.

Quality > Speed

Continuous DeliveryBuild • Test • DeployAnsible is perfect for Continuous DeliveryEspecially with immutable infrastructure

Ansible is powerful out of the boxExtremely easy to extend

@PavelChunyayev

Plenty of information on the internet• Most covers Ansible pre 2.0, but perfect to start with• http://slides.com/alejandroguiraorodriguez/ee-ansible-with-python• http://tylerturk.com/extending-ansible/• http://www.slideshare.net/YanKurniawan1/extending-ansible• http://www.llabs.io/ansible-action-plugins

• http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/developing.html

@PavelChunyayev

Extending Ansible• Dynamic inventory• Plugins• Modules• Python API

Dynamic inventory

@PavelChunyayev

Dynamic inventory• http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/developing_inventory.html• http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_dynamic_inventory.html

• Just a script that returns JSON dictionary of all the groups• Numerous dynamic inventory scripts: https://

github.com/ansible/ansible/tree/devel/contrib/inventory• AWS, Azure, GCE, Digital Ocean, Docker, Openstack, Jails, Zabbix• VMware, Virtualbox, Nagios, oVirt, Consul, etc.

@PavelChunyayev

More dynamic inventories?• Combining several service providers• SNMP • LDAP• Sentia :)

@PavelChunyayev

Ideas for dynamic inventories generated during meetup• SIDN• CMDB• nmap• DNS (scan to identify inventory)• Network inventory• Ssh host config (from files)• Bonjour / ZeroConf• DHCP server• Racktables (or similar services)

Plugins

@PavelChunyayev

Plugins• http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/developing_plugins.html• https://github.com/ansible/ansible/tree/devel/lib/ansible/plugins

• callback• connection• filter• lookup• strategy

@PavelChunyayev

Callback plugins• React on certain events during

Ansible execution

• Some existing:• OS X say• HipChat• Mail• Syslog JSON• Timer

• More?

• Send logs to ELK• Send metrics to Grafana• Leave audit trails• Slack• IRC

@PavelChunyayev

Ideas for callback plugins generated during meetup• Tags (assign tags based on execution)• Backup (additional step before changing something)• Change output• Nagios (or general notification to monitoring systems)

@PavelChunyayev

Connection plugins• More ways to connect to remote

systems

• Some existing:• Docker• chroot• WinRM• Jail• LXC

• More?

• Someone using anything besides SSH? :)• SNMP• SSH gateway• Multifactor authentication

@PavelChunyayev

Filter plugins• Jinja2 filters to use

• Some existing:• Various sets manipulations (math)• IP addresses manipulations• String manipulations• to / from JSON

• More?

• Test is the string is a valid running AWS EC2 instance• Convert AWS instance id into

instance name (IP, DNS name, etc)

@PavelChunyayev

Ideas for connection plugins generated during meetup• telnet• RADIUS• WebDAV / HTTP• mosh • Serial• IPMI

@PavelChunyayev

Lookup plugins• Constructs like with_items:

• Some interesting existing• consul• dict• dig• etcd• redis• etc.

• More?

• RDBMS• LDAP• DNS (IN SRV)

@PavelChunyayev

Ideas for lookup plugins generated during meetup• Mongo• Monitoring (e.g. top 10 hosts with problems)• ElasticSearch• Netstat (services or routing tables)• Multicast• IPtables / other firewalls• Vnstat• /etc/password (not a generic file lookup)

@PavelChunyayev

Strategy plugins• How to execute tasks in

playbook

• Existing:• Linear• Free

• More?

• Random• Some tasks free, some linear

@PavelChunyayev

Ideas for strategy plugins generated during meetup• One host, one task at a time• Scoring (calculate the sequence based on the score)

Modules

@PavelChunyayev

Modules• http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/developing_modules.html• Reusable units of magic that can be used by the Ansible API, or by the ansible or ansible-playbook programs.

• Reading official modules is a good way to start• Test your module with hacking/test-module script• Create pull request to modules-extra

@PavelChunyayev

Modules?• Deploying your applications• Configuring running applications• Maven (manage artifacts)• Usage of less popular applications• LDAP manipulation / credentials checking• All those AWS services that are not yet covered by modules• Custom backup• Pipelines as code

Ansible API

@PavelChunyayev

Execute Ansible programmatically • Trigger Ansible run or Ansible-playbook from your application!

• React to some events with running Ansible playbook• Get facts about infrastructure directly from an application• Your own Infrastructure as a Service

@PavelChunyayev

Extending Ansible

•Dynamic inventory

•Plugins

•Modules

•Python API

@PavelChunyayev

Takeaways• Ansible is a perfect tool• Easily extendable when needed• Don’t be afraid to extend Ansible• Don’t forget to return code to community

• Participate in Ansible Coder’s Dojo

pavel@levi9.com

Any questions?