F5 & Ansible Meetups - Setup and Demo

This repository has been created to help F5 engineers demo the capabilities of BIG-IP configured via Ansible. For our demo purposes, we will run an Operations playbook, this quick demo will create new objects (Nodes, Pool, Profiles, iRules and Virtual Server), along with upload and configure an App_Svcs iApp. Since the Ansible modules are Idempotent, the same modules can be used for updating a service as needed. After the services are deployed we will tear down the created items, showing lifecycle of an application from a code perspective.

Order of Operations

The order of operations from beginning to end can be a learning curve; this is because as Engineers we're used to modifying configuration directly, with Infrastructure as Code we're setting our desired state in Code and then letting Orchestration carry the solution to end (Declarative). The Helper Script is the starting point to executing our Order of Operations; after the desired state is defined (main.yml) we start the process by executing the Helper Script, which calls our Playbook, the Playbook specifies a Role which contains Tasks, the Tasks are executed in order with variables defined by our main.yml file. The main.yml file is the desired end state, Tasks, Modules, Role(s) and Playbook(s) get you there.

---

Tool Kits

Ansible

F5 builds and contributes to Ansible via Social Coding with Github. Once a module has passed testing, it is submitted to Ansible and rolled into the next version release. F5 modules can come from software editions of Ansible (2.3,2.4 etc.), or can be side-loaded by adding an Ansible library path in ansible.cfg. If you would like to contribute, view what’s available, or acquire modules to side-load, the repository is listed below. You can also Watch this Repository for changes/fixes/additions. F5 Network's Ansible Modules

Ansible Container

F5 has created an MVP solution for getting up and running with Ansible and BIG-IP/iWorkflow. The MVP includes the needed dependencies such as Ansible, Python, f5-common-python, bigsuds, etc. The MVP is delivered via code in this repository and runs within a container via Docker. If you do not have Docker installed you can Install Ansible on a Mac Doc directly.

The minimal Ansible container we will be working with can be viewed on Docker Hub

---

Important MVP Concepts

Extensibility

The Ansible container will dynamically pull down whatever GitHub repository is specified in the REPO environment variable. Utilizing this enables Continuous Delivery of new content every time the container is started, or the repositories are refreshed. This also allows you to specify your own downloaded/forked/cloned repository for use against your custom environment.

-e "REPO=<GitHub_Username>/<Repo_Name>"

For example:

sudo docker run --rm -it -e "REPO=jmcalalang/Ansible_Meetups" artioml/f5-ansible

Ansible Vault

This MVP code leverages the Ansible-Vault tool, the MVP includes an encrypted password protected file password.yml for use with playbooks. The Ansible-Vault password.yml file contains the credentials of the BIG-IP we'll be working with, in our demo environment the BIG-IP credentials are "admin" and "password", in your environment these will likely be different, change them as needed. To edit password.yml to a different username and password run the following command from the mapped repository directory in the Ansible container:

ansible-vault edit password.yml

The Ansible-Vault password for the password.yml file is password

hosts File

The hosts file is used as a list of Ansible Inventory, in our case the MVP is configured to execute on only a single specified host, changing this file to reflect your Inventory will allow you to run this demonstration against your environment

[BIG-IPA]
10.1.1.6

hosts

main.yml File

This file contains the variables used in the various Ansible scripts we will be executing, changing the variables in this file reflect what Ansible will deploy to a BIG-IP, for custom environments this will need to be modified. In the MVP, there are currently main.yml files for every playbook; our demo operations playbook will utilize an already configured one to create things like Nodes/Pools and Virtual Servers.

main.yml

---

Running the Demo

Staging the Environment

For F5 Engineers a UDF 2.0 Blueprint has been created, the main.yml, hosts, password.yml have all been configured to use UDF. If you are running this demo from another environment, you will need to update all these files respectively.

1. Login to UDF via Federate
2. Deploy UDF Blueprint "F5 Super-NetOps & Ansible MVP"
3. Once deployed, make sure you start all VM's
4. Login to the Windows Host via RDP (Credentials are user/user)
5. After you are on the Windows Host open application Putty (Located on the Task Bar)
6. From the Putty window connect to the Docker Host (Credentials are ubuntu no password)

Using the MVP Image

1. Launch the container with the command below from the shell window of the Docker Host

sudo docker run --rm -it -e "REPO=jmcalalang/Ansible_Meetups" artioml/f5-ansible

Modify the REPO variable accordingly if you are working on your own forked / cloned repository.

2. After the successful launch of the Ansible container you should be dropped into its shell, and the repo directory:

ubuntu@ip-10-1-1-4:~$ sudo docker run --rm -it -e "REPO=jmcalalang/Ansible_Meetups" artioml/f5-ansible
Cloning into 'Ansible_Meetups'...
remote: Counting objects: 311, done.
remote: Total 311 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 311
Receiving objects: 100% (311/311), 3.19 MiB | 26.80 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (94/94), done.
/opt/ansible/Ansible_Meetups $

3. Open Chrome from the Windows Host and validate the LAMP bookmark does not load, also verify via the BIG-IP A bookmark (Credentials admin/password) the configuration is blank, no objects exist yet
4. Return to the MVP and run the Ansible operations Playbook with Helper Script ./run_ansible.sh -o
5. Enter the Ansible-Vault password password
6. Verify the Ansible Run success
7. Check BIG-IP A via the GUI for the newly created Node/Pool/Profiles/iRules and Virtual, and also the App_Svcs iApp deployment. The LAMP bookmark should also now function, loading the BIG-IP platform page
8. Run the Ansible operations Teardown Playbook with Helper Script ./run_ansible.sh -t
9. Enter the Ansible-Vault password password
10. Verify the Ansible Run success
11. Check BIG-IP A via the GUI for the removed objects and iApp
12. Demo complete, eat Cake.

---

Useful Information about the MVP and Ansible

Module Documentation

The MVP is also already setup all current F5 modules, for a more in-depth view of the modules we will be working with: Ansible Module Documents Used in this Collection

Ansible Roles

This Ansible repository is organized into roles. Roles are collections of templates, files, tasks, and variables. Tasks are organized based on the particular module they are implementing. For example, the bigip_device_ntp module is a subdirectory under the onboarding role and has a task set_ntp.yml (roles/tasks/bigip_device_ntp/set_ntp.yml).

Ansible Playbooks

The playbooks in in the ansible playbook directory include the roles. For our demo and MVP, we execuded the operation Playbook.

$ANSIBLE_HOME_DIRECTORY/site.yml
$ANSIBLE_HOME_DIRECTORY/playbooks/onboarding.yml
$ANSIBLE_HOME_DIRECTORY/playbooks/operation.yml
$ANSIBLE_HOME_DIRECTORY/playbooks/teardown.yml
$ANSIBLE_HOME_DIRECTORY/playbooks/today.yml

Running the Ansible Code

This Ansible code base comes with a shell helper script that runs the playbooks. The

$ANSIBLE_HOME_DIRECTORY/run_ansible.sh --all
$ANSIBLE_HOME_DIRECTORY/run_ansible.sh --onboarding
$ANSIBLE_HOME_DIRECTORY/run_ansible.sh --operation
$ANSIBLE_HOME_DIRECTORY/run_ansible.sh --teardown

YAML Syntax Overview

The MVP is already setup with some configuration, which needs only small modification to support working in your environment, if you would like a deeper understanding of Ansible code language YAML, it can be found at: YAML Syntax Overview

Ansible Variable Precedence

Ansible 2.x Order of Variable Precedence

Useful vimrc macro for editing YAML files

autocmd FileType yaml setlocal ai ts=2 sw=2 et colorcolumn=1,3,5,7,9,11,13 nu

Infrastructure as Code Principles, Practices and Patterns

Infrastructure as Code Benefits

---

License

__

Apache V2.0

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.