CloudForms 4.6 provided the ability to run embedded Ansible playbooks as methods, and it can be useful to include such a playbook in an existing workflow such as the VM Provision state machine.

In this example an Ansible playbook method is used at the AcquireIPAddress state to insert an IP address, netmask and gateway into the VM provisioning workflow. A cloud-init script is then used at first boot to set the values in the new VM using nmcli.

Creating the Instance and Method

A new acquire_ip_address instance and method are defined in the usual manner. The method is of Type: playbook and is defined to run on Hosts: localhost

The input parameters for the playbook method are dynamic. Two parameters miq_provision_request_id (the request ID) and miq_provision_id (the task ID), are defined as follows:

The new instance is added to the AcquireIPAddress state of the VM Provision state machine:

Inserting the IP Details into the VM Provision Workflow

The playbook can write the acquired IP details back into the provision task’s options hash in either of two ways: using the RESTful API, or using an Ansible role.

Calling the CloudForms RESTful API

The first example playbook uses the CloudForms RESTful API to write the retrieved IP details back in to the provision task’s options hash. To simplify the example the IP address, netmask and gateway are defined as static vars; in reality these would be retrieved from a corporate IPAM solution such as Infobox.

—- name: Acquire and Set an IP Address hosts: all gather_facts: no vars: - ip_addr: 192.168.1.66 - netmask: 24 - gateway: 192.168.1.254 tasks: - debug: var=miq_provision_id - debug: var=miq_provision_request_id - name: Update Task with New IP and Hostname Information uri: url: “/api/provision_requests//request_tasks/” method: POST body_format: json body: action: edit resource: options: addr_mode: [“static”, “Static”] ip_addr: “” subnet_mask: “” gateway: “” validate_certs: no headers: X-Auth-Token: “” body_format: json status_code: 200

Using the manageiq-vmdb Ansible Role

The second example playbook uses the manageiq-vmdb Ansible role (GitHub – syncrou/manageiq-vmdb: Manageiq Role to modify / lookup vmdb objects) to write the retrieved IP details back into the provision task’s options hash. Once again the IP address, netmask and gateway are defined as static vars for simplicity of illustration.

—- name: Acquire and Set an IP Address hosts: all gather_facts: no vars: - ip_addr: 192.168.1.66 - netmask: 24 - gateway: 192.168.1.254 - auto_commit: true - manageiq_validate_certs: false roles: - syncrou.manageiq-vmdb tasks: - debug: var=miq_provision_id - debug: var=miq_provision_request_id - name: Get the task vmdb object manageiq_vmdb: href: “provision_requests//request_tasks/” register: task_object - name: Update Task with new IP and Hostname Information manageiq_vmdb: vmdb: “” action: edit data: options: addr_mode: [“static”, “Static”] ip_addr: “” subnet_mask: “” gateway: “”

In these example playbooks the netmask variable is defined in CIDR format rather than as octets, to be compatible with nmcli.

Configuring the IP Address at First Boot

Configuring a NIC with IP address details is a guest operating system operation, and so must be performed when the VM or instance first boots. For this example a template cloud-init script is defined in Compute -> Infrastructure -> PXE -> Customization Templates in the WebUI, as follows:

<% root_password = MiqPassword.decrypt(evm[:root_password]) hostname = evm[:hostname] ip_addr = evm[:ip_addr] subnet_mask = evm[:subnet_mask] gateway = evm[:gateway] dns_servers = evm[:dns_servers] dns_suffixes = evm[:dns_suffixes]%>#cloud-configssh_pwauth: truedisable_root: falseusers: - default - name: ansible-remote shell: /bin/bash sudo: [‘ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL’] ssh_authorized_keys: - ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2E…chpasswd: list: root:<%= root_password %> expire: falseruncmd: ## Setup motd - echo Welcome to VM <%= hostname %>, provisioned by Red Hat CloudForms on $(date) > /etc/motd - rm -f /root/* - nmcli –fields UUID con show awk ‘!/UUID/ {print}’ while read line; do nmcli con delete uuid $line; done - nmcli con add con-name eth0 ifname eth0 type ethernet ip4 “<%= ip_addr %>/<%= subnet_mask %>” gw4 “<%= gateway %>” - nmcli con mod eth0 ipv4.dns “<%= dns_servers %>” ipv4.dns-search “<%= dns_suffixes %>” connection.autoconnect yes - nmcli con up eth0 - hostnamectl set-hostname <%= hostname %> - systemctl mask cloud-init-local cloud-init cloud-config cloud-final

If the cloud-init script is selected from the Customize tab of the provisioning dialog, CloudForms will make the variable substitutions at run-time and inject the resultant script into the VM or instance to be run at first boot.