Using Ansible’s in-memory inventory to create a variable number of instances¶

This tutorial assumes the following:

You have installed the OpenStack command line tools and sourced an OpenStack RC file, as explained at Installation on Linux and Mac
You have a basic understanding of how to use Ansible on the Catalyst Cloud as shown here

Introduction¶

Normally Ansible requires an inventory file to be created, to know which machines it is meant to operate on.

This is typically a manual process but can be greatly improved by using the likes of the dynamic inventory to pull inventory information from other systems. Details for this approach are shown at Using ansible dynamic inventories on the Catalyst Cloud.

Suppose, however, you needed to create ‘x’ number of instances which were transient in nature and had no existing details available to populate an inventory file for Ansible to utilise? If ‘x’ is a small number, you could easily hand-craft the inventory file, but once this number gets into tens of instances it becomes onerous.

To get around this problem, we can make use of Ansible’s ability to populate an in-memory inventory, using the add_host module, with information it generates while creating new instances.

How does it work?¶

The add_host module makes use of variables to create an in-memory inventory of new hosts and groups that can be used in subsequent plays within the same playbook.

Parameter	Required	Comments
groups	no	The groups to add the hostname to, comma separated. aliases: groupname, group
name	yes	The hostname/ip of the host to add to the inventory, can include a colon and a port number. aliases: hostname, host

The table above shows the basic parameters required for using add_host:

name can be the hostname or IP address that will be used to reference the newly created instances
groups is optional and creates group labels to access the new instances using the ‘host:’ directive in subsequent plays

It is also possible to add custom variables at this time to help further define the new hosts.

# add host to group 'created_vms' with a variable foo=42
- add_host:
    name: "{{ public_v4 }}"
    groups: created_vms
    foo: 42

A working example¶

The goal¶

The requirements of this playbook are as follows:

create a variable number of OpenStack instances on the Catalyst cloud
carry out identical configuration across all nodes
pause the playbook to allow for interaction with the new nodes, i.e. processing/testing etc.
on resuming playback, terminate all new instances

This makes the following assumptions:

an RC file has already been sourced
a private network called example-net already exists
a security group called example-sg already exists
an access key called example-key has already been uploaded

The approach¶

Play 1¶

The number of instances to be created is controlled by a ‘count’ variable. As the instances are created, the results are captured in a registered variable called ‘newnodes’. This is in turn iterated over using a ‘loop’ to add the required details to the in-memory inventory, as shown in this snippet:

      add_host:
        name: "{{ item.server.public_v4 }}"
        groups: created_nodes
        ansible_user: ubuntu
        instance_name: "{{ item.server.name }}"
      loop: "{{ newnodes.results }}"

Play 2¶

The newly created group ‘created_nodes’ is used to iterate over the new instances. Firstly it checks to see that SSH is responding and then it begins the configuration of the nodes.

For the purposes of this example, the configuration involves simply installing some packages onto each node. Once this has been completed, the playbook is paused and will remain that way until told to either continue or abort.

Play 3¶

Assuming that playback is continued rather than aborted, the final play will delete all of the nodes in the ‘created_nodes’ group.

The playbook¶

Here is the complete playbook containing the three plays outlined above:

---
#
# Play 1 - Create 'x' instances in Openstack based on 'count' var
#
- name: Deploy multiple duplicate cloud instances in OpenStack
  hosts: localhost

  vars:
    image: ubuntu-18.04-x86_64
    network: example-net
    key_name: example-key
    flavor: c1.c1r1
    security_groups: example-sg
    count: 3

  tasks:
    - name: Connect to the Catalyst Cloud
      # assume RC file has already been sourced
      os_auth:

    - name: Launch web instances
      os_server:
        state: present
        name: test0{{ item }}
        flavor: "{{ flavor }}"
        image: "{{ image }}"
        key_name: "{{ key_name }}"
        wait: true
        network: "{{ network }}"
        security_groups: "{{ security_groups }}"
        auto_ip: true
      loop: "{{ range(1, count + 1) | list }}"
      register: newnodes

    - name: Create in-memory Ansible inventory
      add_host:
        name: "{{ item.server.public_v4 }}"
        groups: created_nodes
        ansible_user: ubuntu
        instance_name: "{{ item.server.name }}"
      loop: "{{ newnodes.results }}"

#
# Play 2 - Configure nodes from in-memory inventory
#
- name: Configure nodes
  hosts: created_nodes
  become: true
  gather_facts: false

  tasks:
    - name: Wait for SSH banners
      wait_for_connection:
        delay: 5
        timeout: 300

    - name: Install apps
      apt:
        state: present
        name: ["git", "htop"]
        update_cache: true

    - name: Pause play to interact with the servers
      pause:
        prompt: "Playbook paused... hit <enter> to continue or <ctrl-c a> to abort"

#
# Play 3 - Destroy nodes
#
- name: Destroy nodes
  hosts: localhost

  tasks:
    - name: Destroy instances
      os_server:
        state: absent
        name: "{{ hostvars.item.instance_name }}"
      loop: "{{ groups.created_nodes }}"