OVH /cloud ansible demo

This project aims at showing how to spawn and configure an OVH/cloud OpenStack server programatically from python.

It uses exclusively Python.

The VM management is done via the python Openstack bindings, and the configuration via Ansible.

Disclaimer

Yes I know I have SSH private keys in private/, please regenerate them they are just here for demo purposes :)

Before using anything, do not forget to pip install -r requirements.txt

Generate /cloud credentials.

You have to login on the OVH panel, go to the /cloud section, then "Project manaagement", then OpenStack, then add a user. When it is done hit the wrench icon and "Download an Openstack configuration file", and overwrite the openrc.sh of this project. You are now good to go !

The scripts !

Several scripts are present here. The main one is new_instance.py and its role is to spawn and configure new VMs. It uses functions from the utils module not to overload it.

The general workflow is the following : ./new_instance.py vm-name

• Will check that the Ansible key is registsred in OpenStack. And if not create it from the local files.
• Create the VM if it does not exists, following the parameters set in cloud.ini (flavor and shit)
• Wait for the VM to have an IP address in the Ext-Net (Internet) network
• Generate an Ansible inventory containing only this VM
• Wait for the VM to be SSH accessible
• Apply Ansible manifests on it.

Note that to run it, you MUST have the OpenStack configuration variables set in your env. To do so execute the openrc.sh file given by OVH or manually set :

• OS_USERNAME
• OS_PASSWORD
• OS_TENANT_NAME
• OS_AUTH_URL
• OS_REGION_NAME

The Ansible manifests

There are two ansible manifests that will be executed.

post_create.yml

I don't know if this is portable to other providers than OVH, but it assumes the following:

• The only user you will be able to use when the VM start is admin, he can sudo and everything.
• You cannot login as root.
• The ansible key will be in admin's home

So the first manifest, post_create.yml will fix it:

• Upgrate the system
• Remove the annoying cloud-init package
• Install the ansible key in root's home

If you want to add more keys, please edit thegroup_vars/all file ;)

base.yml

This manifest will just install a few packages and perform some configration to show what ansible can do. It will install:

• apt
• root_user
• base
• ssh
• ntp
• bash
• vim
• tmux
• pip
• docker
• git

Conclusion

In the end you are able to spawn a fully configured cloud VM in minutes, just by running a single command.

Enhancements

As an enhancement we can imagine using the OVH Python bindings to setup DNS for our VMs for example. The only limit being your imagination.

If you have some enhancements to push onto this demo code, feel free to contact me on twitter: @thomas_maurice