Developing Advanced Automation with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Procedure 2.4. Instructions

1. Change into the /home/student/manage-review/ directory and review the cockpit.yml playbook. Make note of the Ansible Content Collections that the playbook requires.

   1. Change into the /home/student/manage-review/ directory.

      [student@workstation ~]$ cd ~/manage-review/

   2. Review the cockpit.yml playbook.

      [student@workstation manage-review]$ cat cockpit.yml
      ---
      - name: Deploy cockpit
        hosts: servera.lab.example.com
        become: true
      
        tasks:
          - name: Ensure cockpit is installed
            ansible.builtin.yum:
              name: cockpit
              state: present
      
          - name: Ensure the cockpit service is started and enabled
            ansible.builtin.systemd:
              name: cockpit
              state: started
              enabled: true
      
          - name: Ensure Cockpit network traffic is allowed
            ansible.posix.firewalld:
              service: cockpit
              permanent: true
              state: enabled
              immediate: true

      Notice that the ansible.posix.firewalld module requires the ansible.posix collection.

   Hide Solution

2. Use the ansible-navigator command to inspect the automation execution environment images available on your local system. Determine which one you need to run the cockpit.yml playbook.

   1. List the available automation execution environment images.

      [student@workstation manage-review]$ ansible-navigator images
        Image                Tag     Execution environment  Created        Size
      0│ee-minimal-rhel8     latest  True                   3 months ago   294 MB
      1│ee-supported-rhel8   latest  True                   3 months ago   1.68 GB

      Type 1 to select the ee-supported-rhel8 image.

   2. The TUI displays information about the ee-supported-rhel image.

        Image: ee-supported-rhel8:latest  Description
      0│Image information                 Information collected from image inspection
      1│General information               OS and python version information
      2│Ansible version and collections   Information about ansible and ansible ...
      3│Python packages                   Information about python and python packages
      4│Operating system packages         Information about operating system packages
      5│Everything                        All image information

      Type 2 to view the collections available in the ee-supported-rhel8 image.

   3. Notice that the ee-supported-rhel8 image provides the ansible.posix collection that you need to run the cockpit.yml playbook.

      Image: ee-supported-rhel8:latest (Information about ansible and ansible collections)
       0│---
       1│ansible:
       2│  collections:
       3│    details:
       4│      amazon.aws: 3.2.0
       5│      ansible.controller: 4.2.1
       6│      ansible.netcommon: 3.1.1
       7│      ansible.network: 1.2.0
       8│      ansible.posix: 1.3.0
       9│      ansible.security: 1.0.0
      10│      ansible.utils: 2.6.1
      ...output omitted...

      Type :q and then press Enter to exit the ansible-navigator command.

   Hide Solution

3. Run the cockpit.yml playbook by using the ansible-navigator command with the correct automation execution environment image.

   1. Use the ansible-navigator run command with the ee-supported-rhel8 image to run the cockpit.yml playbook.

      [student@workstation manage-review]$ ansible-navigator run cockpit.yml \
      > --eei ee-supported-rhel8
      ...output omitted...

      Press Esc to exit the ansible-navigator command after the playbook run is complete.

   Hide Solution

4. Log in to the web console at https://servera.lab.example.com:9090 to confirm that the playbook correctly configured the web console. Accept the insecure TLS certificate and then log in as the student user. Use student as the password.

   1. Open a web browser on the workstation machine and navigate to https://servera.lab.example.com:9090.

      Accessing the web console login page

   2. Log in with student as the username and student as the password. The playbook correctly configured the web console if the login process is successful.

      Accessing the Overview page

   Hide Solution

5. Review the create_samples_db.yml playbook. Make note of the collections that it requires. Find those collections in the private automation hub.

   You can access the private automation hub web UI at https://hub.lab.example.com. Use student as the username and redhat123 as the password.

   1. Review the create_samples_db.yml playbook.

      [student@workstation manage-review]$ cat create_samples_db.yml
      ---
      - name: Create samples database
        hosts: serverb.lab.example.com
        become: true
      
        tasks:
          - name: Ensure MariaDB is installed
            ansible.builtin.yum:
              name:
                - mariadb
                - mariadb-server
              state: present
      
          - name: Ensure the mariadb service is started and enabled
            ansible.builtin.systemd:
              name: mariadb
              state: started
              enabled: true
      
          - name: Ensure the samples database exists
            community.mysql.mysql_db:
              name: samples
              state: present

      Notice that the playbook requires the community.mysql collection.

   2. Open a web browser and navigate to https://hub.lab.example.com. Use student as the username and redhat123 as the password.

      Navigate to Collections → Collections. Change the Filter by repository selection to Community and search for mysql.

      Searching collections

   3. Click the mysql collection to obtain the ansible-galaxy installation command.

      Retrieving the command to install a collection

   Hide Solution

6. Configure the /home/student/manage-review/ansible.cfg file so that the ansible-galaxy command installs collections from private automation hub.

   1. From the private automation hub web UI, navigate to Collections → Repository Management. Use the CLI configuration section from the community repository to construct the /home/student/manage-review/ansible.cfg file.

      Listing the private automation hub repositories

   2. Add the repository configurations to the /home/student/manage-review/ansible.cfg file.

      [defaults]
      inventory = ./inventory
      remote_user = devops
      
      [galaxy]
      server_list = community_repo
      
      [galaxy_server.community_repo]
      url=https://hub.lab.example.com/api/galaxy/content/community/
      token=<put your token here>

   3. From the private automation hub web UI, navigate to Collections → API token management and then click Load token. Click the Copy to clipboard icon.

      Generating a token

   4. Edit the /home/student/manage-review/ansible.cfg file and then paste the token from the clipboard as the value for the token parameters. Your token is different from the one displayed in the following example.

      [defaults]
      inventory = ./inventory
      remote_user = devops
      
      [galaxy]
      server_list = community_repo
      
      [galaxy_server.community_repo]
      url=https://hub.lab.example.com/api/galaxy/content/community/
      token=865d4517fe18135059d5c093321aac0959041720

   Hide Solution

7. Create the /home/student/manage-review/collections/ directory. In this directory, install any collections that the create_samples_db.yml playbook requires.

   1. Create the /home/student/manage-review/collections/ directory.

      [student@workstation manage-review]$ mkdir collections

   2. Install the community.mysql collection into the /home/student/manage-review/collections/ directory.

      [student@workstation manage-review]$ ansible-galaxy collection install \
      > community.mysql -p collections/
      ...output omitted...

   Hide Solution

8. Use the ansible-navigator command to run the create_samples_db.yml playbook.

   1. Use the ansible-navigator run command to run the playbook.

      [student@workstation manage-review]$ ansible-navigator run create_samples_db.yml
      ...output omitted...

      Press Esc to exit the ansible-navigator command after the playbook run is complete.

   Hide Solution

9. Confirm that the playbook correctly configured a MariaDB database on the serverb machine. You can confirm that the playbook created the samples database by running the sudo mysql -e "SHOW DATABASES" command. The password for the student user is student.

   1. Connect to serverb as the student user.

      [student@workstation manage-review]$ ssh serverb
      ...output omitted...
      [student@serverb ~]$

   2. Confirm that the samples database exists.

      [student@serverb ~]$ sudo mysql -e "SHOW DATABASES"
      [sudo] password for student: student
      +--------------------+
      | Database           |
      +--------------------+
      | information_schema |
      | mysql              |
      | performance_schema |
      | samples            |
      +--------------------+

   3. Log out of the serverb machine.

      [student@serverb ~]$ logout
      Connection to serverb closed.
      [student@workstation manage-review]$

   Hide Solution