Ansible Events

In this blog post, we’ll explore Ansible Rulebook to create an event-driven automation system for provisioning and configuring Multipass VMs. This approach allows you to automate VM creation and configuration based on triggered events. By customizing the event triggers, Ansible roles, and playbook logic, you can create a robust and automated infrastructure management system.

Prerequisites

Ensure you have Multipass and Ansible installed on your Ubuntu or Debian system.

Ubuntu or Debian with Multipass
Refer to the official documentation for installation instructions

canonical.com Install Multipass

To Ansible Install it following the official guide

Installing Ansible

Setting Up the Environment

Install Required Software:

sudo apt-get --assume-yes install openjdk-17-jdk python3-pip
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-17-openjdk-amd64
export PATH=$PATH:~/.local/bin
pip3 install ansible ansible-rulebook ansible-runner

Java (required by Ansible),
ansible: Core Ansible functionality.
ansible-rulebook: Enables event-driven automation workflows.
ansible-runner: Provides flexibility for running Ansible Playbooks.

Start the Ansible Rulebook Engine

ansible-rulebook --rulebook webhook-example.yml -i inventory/inventory.yml --verbose

This command starts the Ansible Rulebook engine, specifying:

# The path to the Ansible Rulebook definition file.
--rulebook webhook-example.yml: 
# The path to the inventory file defining target hosts.
-i inventory/inventory.yml: 
# Enables detailed output for debugging purposes.
--verbose:

Note: Replace webhook-example.yml and inventory/inventory.yml with the actual file paths for your setup.

Triggering the Event (Example)

This curl command sends a POST request to the specified endpoint (127.0.0.1:5000/endpoint)

This command would trigger the execution Ansible playbook, automating VM creation and configuration.

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d "{\"message\": \"Create VM\"}" 127.0.0.1:5000/endpoint

List of Ansible Roles

multipass: Creates Multipass VMs.
common: Updates and upgrades the system, installs required packages.
users: Creates a new user with sudo privileges, sets up SSH keys, and grants passwordless sudo access.
docker: Installs Docker and the docker-compose-plugin.
nodejs: Installs Node Version Manager (NVM) and Node.js.`