Tag: delivery

Ansible and Windows Playbooks

2015/01/29 1 comentari

Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes

Firstly let me introduce a Windows service called: “Windows Remote Manager” or “WinRM”. This is the Windows feature that allows remote control of Windows machines and many other remote functionalities. In my case I have a Windows 7 laptop with SP1 and PowerShell v3 installed.

Secondly don’t forget that Ansible is developed using Python then a Python library have to manage the WinRM protocol. I’m talking about “pywinrm“. Using this library it’s easy to create simple scripts like that:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import winrm

s = winrm.Session('10.2.0.42', auth=('the_username', 'the_password'))
r = s.run_cmd('ipconfig', ['/all'])
print r.status_code
print r.std_out
print r.std_err

This is a remote call to the command “ipconfig /all” to see the Windows machine network configuration. The output is something like:

$ ./winrm_ipconfig.py 
0

Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : mini7w
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . : 
   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : ymbi.net

Ethernet adapter GigaBit + HUB USB:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : ymbi.net
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : ASIX AX88179 USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-23-56-1C-XX-XX
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::47e:c2c:8c25:xxxx%103(Preferred) 
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.2.0.42(Preferred) 
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.192
   Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : mi�rcoles, 28 de enero de 2015 12:41:41
   Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : mi�rcoles, 28 de enero de 2015 19:17:56
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.2.0.1
   DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.2.0.1
   DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 2063606614
   DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-15-F7-BF-36-xx-C5-xx-03-xx-xx
   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.2.0.27
                                       10.2.0.1
   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled
...

Of course, it’s possible to run Powershell scripts like the next one which shows the system memory:

$strComputer = $Host
Clear
$RAM = WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem
$MB = 1048576

"Installed Memory: " + [int]($RAM.TotalPhysicalMemory /$MB) + " MB"

The Python code to run that script is:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import winrm

ps_script = open('scripts/mem.ps1','r').read()
s = winrm.Session('10.2.0.42', auth=('the_username', 'the_password'))
r = s.run_ps(ps_script)
print r.status_code
print r.std_out
print r.std_err

and the output:

$ ./winrm_mem.py 
0
Installed Memory: 2217 MB

In the end it’s time to talk about how to create an Ansible Playbook to deploy anything in a Windows machine. As always the first thing that we need is a hosts file. In the next example there are several ansible variables needed to run Ansible Windows modules on WinRM, all of them are self-explanatory:

[all]
10.2.0.42

[all:vars]
ansible_ssh_user=the_username
ansible_ssh_pass=the_password
ansible_ssh_port=5985 #winrm (non-ssl) port
ansible_connection=winrm

The first basic example could be a simple playbook that runs the ‘ipconfig’ command and registers the output in an Ansible variable to be showed later like a debug information:

- name: test raw module
  hosts: all
  tasks:
    - name: run ipconfig
      raw: ipconfig
      register: ipconfig
    - debug: var=ipconfig

The command and the output to run latest example:

$ ansible-playbook -i hosts ipconfig.yml 

PLAY [test raw module] ******************************************************** 

GATHERING FACTS *************************************************************** 
ok: [10.2.0.42]

TASK: [run ipconfig] ********************************************************** 
ok: [10.2.0.42]

TASK: [debug var=ipconfig] **************************************************** 
ok: [10.2.0.42] => {
    "ipconfig": {
        "invocation": {
            "module_args": "ipconfig", 
            "module_name": "raw"
        }, 
        "rc": 0, 
        "stderr": "", 
        "stdout": "\r\nWindows IP Configuration\r\n\r\n\r\nEthernet adapter GigaBit 
...
        ]
    }
}

PLAY RECAP ******************************************************************** 
10.2.0.42                  : ok=3    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0

As always Ansible have several modules, not only the ‘raw’ module. I committed two examples in my Github account using a module to download URLs and another one that runs Powershell scripts.

My examples are done using Ansible 1.8.2 installed in a Fedora 20. But main problems I’ve found are configuring Windows 7 to accept WinRM connections. Next I attach some references that helped me a lot:

pywinrm Github project notes., easy to trace errors than Ansible.
Ansible notes about Windows.
How to enable WinRM via Group Policy by Alan Burchill

If you want to use my tests code you can connect to my Github: Basic Ansible playbooks for Windows.

Using Ansible like library programming in Python

2015/01/21 7 comentaris

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

Ansible is a very powerful tool. Using playbooks, something like a cookbook, is very easy to automate maintenance tasks of systems. I used Puppet and other tools like that but IMHO Ansible is the best one.

In some cases you need to manage dynamic systems and take into advantage of Ansible like a Python library is a very good complement for your scripts. This is my last requirement and because of that I decided to share some simple Python snippets that help you to understand how to use Ansible as a Python library.

Firstly an example about how to call an Ansible module with just one host in the inventory (test_modules.py):

#!/usr/bin/python 
import ansible.runner
import ansible.playbook
import ansible.inventory
from ansible import callbacks
from ansible import utils
import json

# the fastest way to set up the inventory

# hosts list
hosts = ["10.11.12.66"]
# set up the inventory, if no group is defined then 'all' group is used by default
example_inventory = ansible.inventory.Inventory(hosts)

pm = ansible.runner.Runner(
    module_name = 'command',
    module_args = 'uname -a',
    timeout = 5,
    inventory = example_inventory,
    subset = 'all' # name of the hosts group 
    )

out = pm.run()

print json.dumps(out, sort_keys=True, indent=4, separators=(',', ': '))

As a second example, we’re going to use a simple Ansible Playbook with that code (test.yml):

- hosts: sample_group_name
  tasks:
    - name: just an uname
      command: uname -a

The Python code which uses that playbook is (test_playbook.py):

#!/usr/bin/python 
import ansible.runner
import ansible.playbook
import ansible.inventory
from ansible import callbacks
from ansible import utils
import json

### setting up the inventory

## first of all, set up a host (or more)
example_host = ansible.inventory.host.Host(
    name = '10.11.12.66',
    port = 22
    )
# with its variables to modify the playbook
example_host.set_variable( 'var', 'foo')

## secondly set up the group where the host(s) has to be added
example_group = ansible.inventory.group.Group(
    name = 'sample_group_name'
    )
example_group.add_host(example_host)

## the last step is set up the invetory itself
example_inventory = ansible.inventory.Inventory()
example_inventory.add_group(example_group)
example_inventory.subset('sample_group_name')

# setting callbacks
stats = callbacks.AggregateStats()
playbook_cb = callbacks.PlaybookCallbacks(verbose=utils.VERBOSITY)
runner_cb = callbacks.PlaybookRunnerCallbacks(stats, verbose=utils.VERBOSITY)

# creating the playbook instance to run, based on "test.yml" file
pb = ansible.playbook.PlayBook(
    playbook = "test.yml",
    stats = stats,
    callbacks = playbook_cb,
    runner_callbacks = runner_cb,
    inventory = example_inventory,
    check=True
    )

# running the playbook
pr = pb.run()  

# print the summary of results for each host
print json.dumps(pr, sort_keys=True, indent=4, separators=(',', ': '))

If you want to download example files you can go to my github account: github.com/oriolrius/programming-ansible-basics

I hope it was useful for you.