Automation of virtual machines

Dynamic inventories allow Ansible to automatically fetch and update the list of systems from external sources, eliminating the need for manual management.

In this lab, we will configure a dynamic inventory to pull data from OpenShift Virtualization. This will enable Ansible to manage OpenShift VMs residing in the vms-aap-day2 namespace of an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

Create an inventory

1. In the left side menu, click to expand the menu for Automation Execution, then click on Infrastructure, followed by Inventories.

Figure 2. Automation execution, infrastructure, inventories

2. Click the Create inventory dropdown box and select the Create inventory option.

Figure 3. Create inventory dropdown

3. Fill out or select the appropriate value from the drop down menus available for the following fields in the Create Inventory form:
   • Name: OpenShift Virtual Machines
   • Organization: Default
4. Click the Create inventory button at the bottom.

Figure 4. Create inventory

Add a source to the inventory

1. After creating the inventory, switch to the Sources tab.
2. Select the Create source button.

Figure 5. Sources tab

3. Fill out or select the appropriate value from the drop down menus available for the following fields in the Create Source form:
   • Name: OpenShift Virtual Machines Source
   • Execution environment: Day 2 EE
   • Source: OpenShift Virtualization
   • Credential: OpenShift Credential
   • Update on launch Checkbox: Checked
   • Cache timeout (seconds): 0

4. Copy and paste the following YAML snippet into the Source variables field on the form.

   namespaces:
     - vms-aap-day2

5. Click the Create source button to save the configuration.

Figure 6. Create inventory source

Update the inventory

1. Click the Launch Inventory Update button in the top-right corner to start inventory collection.

Figure 7. Update inventory

2. Wait for the Last Job Status to show Success.

Figure 8. Job status success

3. Click on the tab for Back to Inventory Sources.

Figure 9. Back to Inventory Sources

4. Switch to the Hosts tab at the top of the screen.
5. Confirm that the virtual machines from the vms-app-day2 namespace of your OpenShift cluster are listed as inventory hosts.

Figure 10. Verify hosts

6. To verify that the machines are alive, we can select the three VMs we have discovered and run an automated ping job against them by clicking the Run command button.

Figure 11. Run command

7. You will be presented with the Run command wizard with several pages:
   • On the Details page, select ping from the Module dropdown menu, and click Next.
   • On the Execution Environment page, select Day2 EE from the Execution Environment dropdown, and click Next.
   • On the Credential page, select Workshop Credential from the Credential dropdown, and click Next.
   • On the Review page, check over your selected options, and when you are ready click the Finish button.

Figure 12. Review run command

8. The output of running the command should be similar to the output below, including the names of each VM and their status:

vms-aap-day2-rhel9-vm1 | SUCCESS => {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
}
vms-aap-day2-rhel9-vm2 | SUCCESS => {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
}
vms-aap-day2-rhel9-vm3 | SUCCESS => {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
}

Figure 13. Ping success

Verifying VM inventory in the OpenShift console

1. Switch to your OpenShift administration console window.
2. On the left side navigation menu, click on Virtualization and then VirtualMachines.
3. Highlight the vms-aap-day2 project in the central navigation column.
4. Confirm that the virtual machines are running.

Figure 14. Virtual machines running on OpenShift

In the next resource, we’ll continue to demonstrate how to automate virtual machines, focusing on automated VM management.

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