Calling a Playbook Method from the VM Provision State Machine

Given the ability to run embedded Ansible playbooks as methods, it can be useful to include such a playbook into an existing workflow such as the VM Provision state machine.

In this example an Ansible playbook method is used at the AcquireIPAddress state to insert an IP address, netmask and gateway into the VM provisioning workflow. A cloud-init script is then used at first boot to set the values in the new VM using nmcli.

Creating the Instance and Method

A new acquire_ip_address instance and method are defined in the usual manner. The method is of Type: playbook and is defined to run on Hosts: localhost (see screenshot acquire_ip_address Instance and Method).

acquire_ip_address Instance and Method

The input parameters for the playbook method are dynamic. Two parameters miq_provision_request_id (the request ID) and miq_provision_id (the task ID), are defined for the method (see screenshot Input Parameters).

Input Parameters

The new instance is added to the AcquireIPAddress state of the VM Provision state machine (see screenshot Instance Added to the VM Provision State Machine).

Instance Added to the VM Provision State Machine

Inserting the IP Details into the VM Provision Workflow

The playbook can write the acquired IP details back into the provision task's options hash in either of two ways: using the RESTful API, or using the manageiq-vmdb Ansible role (see section manageiq-vmdb).

Calling the CloudForms RESTful API

The first example playbook uses the CloudForms RESTful API to write the retrieved IP details back in to the provision task's options hash. To simplify the example the IP address, netmask and gateway are defined as static vars; in reality these would be retrieved from a corporate IPAM solution such as Infoblox.

---
- name: Acquire and Set an IP Address
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  vars:
  - ip_addr: 192.168.1.66
  - netmask: 24
  - gateway: 192.168.1.254

  tasks:
  - debug: var=miq_provision_id
  - debug: var=miq_provision_request_id

  - name: Update Task with New IP and Hostname Information
    uri:
      url: "{{ manageiq.api_url }}/api/provision_requests/{{ miq_provision_request_id }}/request_tasks/{{ miq_provision_id }}"
      method: POST
      body_format: json
      body:
        action: edit
        resource:
          options:
            addr_mode: ["static", "Static"]
            ip_addr: "{{ ip_addr }}"
            subnet_mask: "{{ netmask }}"
            gateway: "{{ gateway }}"
      validate_certs: no
      headers:
        X-Auth-Token: "{{ manageiq.api_token }}"
      body_format: json
      status_code: 200

Using the manageiq-vmdb Ansible Role

The second example playbook uses the manageiq-vmdb Ansible role to write the retrieved IP details back into the provision task's options hash. Once again the IP address, netmask and gateway are defined as static vars for simplicity of illustration.

---
- name: Acquire and Set an IP Address
  hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  vars:
  - ip_addr: 192.168.1.66
  - netmask: 24
  - gateway: 192.168.1.254
  - manageiq_validate_certs: false

  roles:
    - syncrou.manageiq-vmdb

  tasks:
  - debug: var=miq_provision_id
  - debug: var=miq_provision_request_id

  - name: Update Task with new IP and Hostname Information
    manageiq_vmdb:
      href: "provision_requests/{{ miq_provision_request_id }}/request_tasks/{{ miq_provision_id }}"
      action: edit
      data:
        options:
          addr_mode: ["static", "Static"]
          ip_addr: "{{ ip_addr }}"
          subnet_mask: "{{ netmask }}"
          gateway: "{{ gateway }}"

In these example playbooks the netmask variable is defined in CIDR format rather than as octets, to be compatible with nmcli.

Configuring the IP Address at First Boot

Configuring a NIC with IP address details is a guest operating system operation, and so must be performed when the VM or instance first boots. For this example a template cloud-init script is defined in Compute -> Infrastructure -> PXE -> Customization Templates in the CloudForms WebUI, as follows:

<% 
   ip_addr = evm[:ip_addr]
   subnet_mask = evm[:subnet_mask]
   gateway = evm[:gateway]
   dns_servers = evm[:dns_servers]
   dns_suffixes = evm[:dns_suffixes]
%>
#cloud-config
ssh_pwauth: true
disable_root: false
users:
  - default
  - name: ansible-remote
    shell: /bin/bash
    sudo: ['ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL']
    ssh_authorized_keys:
      - ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2E...
runcmd:
  - nmcli --fields UUID con show | awk '!/UUID/ {print}' | while read line; do nmcli con delete uuid $line; done 
  - nmcli con add con-name eth0 ifname eth0 type ethernet 
    ip4 "<%= ip_addr %>/<%= subnet_mask %>"
    gw4 "<%= gateway %>"
  - nmcli con mod eth0
    ipv4.dns "<%= dns_servers %>"
    ipv4.dns-search "<%= dns_suffixes %>"
    connection.autoconnect yes
  - nmcli con up eth0
  - systemctl mask cloud-init-local cloud-init cloud-config cloud-final

If the cloud-init script is selected from the Customize tab of the provisioning dialog, CloudForms will make the variable substitutions at run-time and inject the resultant script into the VM or instance to be run at first boot.