Introduction:
Ansible is an open-source automation tool used for IT tasks such as VM provisioning and application deployment. Automation through Ansible simplifies complex IT tasks, thereby not just making developers’ and system administrators’ jobs more manageable but allowing them to focus on other tasks that add value to an organization. In other words, it frees up time and increases efficiency.
Ansible uses a simple syntax written in YAML called playbooks. YAML is a human-readable data serialization language. It is incredibly simple.
Automating VM Provisioning using Ansible on Vmware :
Ansible provides various modules to manage VMware infrastructure, which includes datacenter, cluster, host system and virtual machine. Using Ansible with VMware allows organizations to enable a simple self-service IT model across all environments.
Out of the box, Ansible ships over fifty VMware modules supporting most use cases, including:
- Managing vSphere guests(Virtual Machines)
- VM template and snapshot management
- vSwitches, DNS settings, firewall rules and NAT gateway rules
Integration with Infoblox
Traditionally after VM provisioning by Ansible, multiple teams interact with each other to ensure that the newly provisioned VM has been assigned a correct IP address and A and PTR DNS records have been created. This approach mostly is manual and is error prone.
Integrating Infoblox with Ansible during VM provisioning streamlines this entire process. After the VM gets provisioned, Ansible makes a REST call (using native URI module) to Infoblox for an IP address, after assigning this IP address to the VM ansible makes a second REST call (using native URI module) to Infoblox for creating A and PTR records.
The following flow chart sums up the entire process of automating VM provisioning using Ansible and Infoblox.
Summary
Integrating Infoblox with Ansible speeds up the process of commissioning a VM. It automates the VM provisioning process in terms of IP address management and DNS record creation.
