oneview-ansible-in-container.md

Running HPE oneview-ansible in a container

Introduction

This how to guide and accompanying GitHub repository will show how to use the HPE oneview-ansible module from a containerized version on the Docker Store to manage and configure HPE infrastructure.

HPE oneview-ansible in a container

Docker containers provide a low friction way to get developer environments and CI/CD pipelines up and running easily and consistently. But they do present challenges. They are isolated by design and are immutable. Somehow the oneview-ansible container needs to get access to the playbooks to run.

Setting up the playbooks

Docker volumes are storage that can be shared among containers and persist beyond the lifecycle of containers. Begin by creating a Docker volume

docker volume create --name playbooks

Next run a container that can access the sample playbook and allow you to edit the playbooks.

docker run -it --rm -v playbooks:/playbooks --entrypoint /bin/ash alpine/git

This will run an Alpine Linux container with git installed. The arguments run the container in interactive mode (-it), remove the container on exit (--rm), mount the Docker volume playbooks at the mount point /playbooks, and override the default command (git) with the ash shell.

Use git to get the sample ansible playbooks:

cd /playbooks
git clone https://github.com/HewlettPackard/oneview-ansible-samples.git

Edit the configuration file `oneview-config.json' and provide the IP address and credentials for the OneView appliance or Synergy composer:

cd /playbooks/oneview-ansible-samples/oneview-ansible-in-container
vi oneview-config.json

Editor's note: Let's pause while developers read their favorite exiting vim humor

Running the playbook

At this point you are ready to run the sample playbook. Either exit the alpine/git container or open another command window and run the oneview-ansible-debian container:

docker run -it --rm -v playbooks:/playbooks hewlettpackardenterprise/oneview-ansible-debian /bin/bash
cd /playbooks/oneview-ansible-samples/oneview-ansible-in-container

You are now in a bash shell ready to run playbooks with the oneview-ansible modules. Enclosure Groups represent the top of the hierarchy of OneView resources. The following command will get information about all Enclosure Groups:

ansible-playbook -i hosts enclosure_group_facts.yml

Cleanup

When you no longer need the shared volume it can be removed with:

docker volume rm playbooks

Conclusion

You now have an environment to run ansible playbooks using the HPE OneView module in a container. You can switch to other directories in the cloned repository and try other samples. Additional samples can be found in the oneview-ansible repository under examples.

Copyright (2018) Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP