Ansible Collection - lab.azure_deployment

This is a collection that will deploy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform on Microsoft Azure. While this collection will work with any Ansible deployment on Azure, this is intended to be a starting point for customers that purchase Ansible Automation Platform subscriptions from the Azure marketplace. Take this collection and enhance/improve/update based on the resources that you need for your AAP deployment.

NOTE : It is assumed that only one dedicated resource group will be made, used, and deleted by the playbooks and roles in this repository.

Introduction

This collection performs the following actions in the order listed. There are variables that can be used to skip or prevent steps by setting variables, which are covered later in this document.

Step	Description
Create a deployment ID	Creates a random string that will be used in tagging for correlating the resources used with a deployment of AAP.
Merge tags	Merges customer provided tags with the default ones.
Create a resource group	Creates a resource group to contain all of the related resources for the AAP installation.
Create a virtual network	Creates a virtual network with a CIDR block that can contain the subnets that will be created.
Create subnets	Creates the subnets for automation controller, execution environments, private automation hub, and Event-Driven Ansible.
Create the private DNS zone	Creates the private DNS zone for PostgreSQL.
Create a network security group	Creates a security group that allows AAP ports within the VNET and HTTPS and automation mesh ports externally.
Create a database server	Creates a PostgreSQL Flexible Server and the necessary databases inside of it for the controller, hub, and Event-Driven Ansible components.
Create the controller VMs	Creates VMs for controller, a public IP, and the virtual network interface card with the public IP attached.
Create the controller LB	Creates the Load Balancer (Application Gateway) for the controller VMs.
Create the execution nodes VMs	Creates VMs for execution nodes (if enabled), a public IP, and the virtual network interface card with the public IP attached.
Create the hub VMs	Creates VMs for private automation hub, a public IP, and the virtual network interface card with the public IP attached.
Create the Event-Driven Ansible VMs	Creates VMs for Event-Driven Ansible (if enabled), a public IP, and the virtual network interface card with the public IP attached.
Register the VMs with Red Hat	Uses RHEL subscription manager to register each virtual machine for required RPM repos.
Update the VMs	Updates each VM deployed with latest kernel and packages.
Setup one controller VM as the installer	Configures the installer VMs with a private SSH key so that it can communicate with the other VMs that are part of the installation process and configures the installer inventory file based on the VMs that were created as part of this process.

Getting Started

These sections will describe required or recommended steps so that your Ansible Automation Platform deployment is as seamless as possible.

This Collection

Install the collection directly from the ansible-galaxy CLI tool. Examples in this readme assume that you have done this.

ansible-galaxy collection install git+https://github.com/ansible-content-lab/azure_ansible_deployment.git

You may also download the collection from GitHub and modify to suit your needs.

Roles

This collection includes the following roles. Each role has default variables and required variables. Review the default variables files to view all of the options that may be set.

Role	Description
`lab.azure_deployment.infrastructure`	Responsible for deploying the Azure infrastructure.

Azure Credentials

The Azure collection used as a dependency requires Azure credentials, which can be set in different places, such as the ~/.azure/credentials file above, through environment variables, or the Azure CLI profile. The easiest, and most portable, approach will be to set the following env vars.

AZURE_CLIENT_ID
AZURE_SECRET
AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID
AZURE_TENANT

The playbooks included in this collection will need a way to connect to the virtual machines that it creates. By default, VMs are created with public IP addresses to make this simple, but the collection may be modified to use private IP addresses if your local machine can route traffic to private networks.

Deploying Ansible Automation Platform

This section will walk through deploying the Azure infrastructure and Ansible Automation Platform.

Checklist

Install this collection (or download and modify)
Ansible CLI tools installed locally (ansible) NOTE: On Mac, use pip installed Ansible. We have seen problems when trying to use brew installed Ansible.
Configure the Azure environment variables for authentication
Ensure you don't have anything else in the resource group that you use (default of specified via an extra var)

Running the Playbook

The variables below are required for running the playbook

Variable	Description
`aap_red_hat_username`	This is your Red Hat account name that will be used for Subscription Management (https://access.redhat.com/management).
`aap_red_hat_password`	The Red Hat account password.
`infrastructure_database_server_user`	Username that will be the admin of the new database server.
`infrastructure_database_server_password`	Password of the admin of the new database server.
`aap_admin_password`	The admin password to create for Ansible Automation Platform application.

Additional variables can be found in playbooks/group_vars/all.yml and roles/infrastructure/default/main.yml.

Assuming that all variables are configured properly and your Azure account has permissions to deploy the resources defined in this collection, then running the playbook should be a single task. For example:

ansible-playbook lab.azure_deployment.deploy_infrastructure --extra-vars "aap_red_hat_username=$RED_HAT_ACCOUNT aap_red_hat_password=$RED_HAT_PASSWORD infrastructure_database_server_user=example_user infrastructure_database_server_password=example_database_server_password
aap_admin_password=example_aap_admin_password"

NOTE: The playbook will pause and wait for you to answer an SSH fingerprint question for each VM while deploying the infrastructure. If you wish to bypass this manual step, run the following command before running the playbook:

export ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=False

Load Balancer (Application Gateway)

By default, no LB is created for the controller VMs. Set infrastructure_create_controller_lb to true to create the LB. There needs to be more than one controller VM for the LB to be created as well.

By default, the LB is created with a HTTPS listener that will need a PFX password-protected certificate to be provided. Set infrastructure_cert_path to the path of the certificate to use. If an LB is deployed and a certificate is provided, a password needs to be specified while running the collection.

For example:

ansible-playbook lab.azure_deployment.deploy_infrastructure --extra-vars "aap_red_hat_username=$RED_HAT_ACCOUNT aap_red_hat_password=$RED_HAT_PASSWORD infrastructure_database_server_user=example_user infrastructure_database_server_password=example_password infrastructure_certificate_password=example_password"

Once all the infrastructure is deployed, the LB backend VM targets will look unhealthy because AAP is not yet installed and additional actions need to be performed on the LB itself.

Once AAP has been installed, a self-signed certificate will be issued as part of the defualt installation. The CA used during the installation needs to be configured within the LB to validate the HTTPS/443 connectivity between the LB and the backend VMs. For that we'll need to grab the CA from the VM where we have initiated the AAP installation. Copy the contents of /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/ansible-automation-platform-managed-ca-cert.crt and save that into a .cer file. Then in the Azure portal, go to the Application Gateway > Backend settings > click on the existing backend settings > Click on 'No' on the Backend server’s certificate is issued by a well-known CA. Click the Add certificate button and add the .cer file. Once that is done, the Application Gateway address will be able to reach AAP on the backend VMs.

Installing Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

At this point you can ssh into one of the controller nodes and run the installer. We provided a sample inventory that could be used to deploy AAP. You might need to edit the inventory to fit your needs.

$ cd /opt/ansible-automation-platform/installer/
$ sudo ./setup.sh -i inventory_azure

For more information, read the install guide from https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_ansible_automation_platform/

Uninstall

The destroy_infrastructure playbook will remove RHEL subscription entitlements and deprovision the infrastructure that has been deployed in the given resource group. This will permanently remove all data and infrastructure in the resource group, so only run this playbook if you are sure that you want to delete all traces of the deployment.

The variables below are required for running the playbook

Variable	Description
`aap_red_hat_username`	This is your Red Hat account name that will be used for Subscription Management (https://access.redhat.com/management).
`aap_red_hat_password`	The Red Hat account password.

ansible-playbook lab.azure_deployment.destroy_infrastructure --extra-vars "aap_red_hat_username=$RED_HAT_ACCOUNT aap_red_hat_password=$RED_HAT_PASSWORD"