Ansible includes a suite of modules for interacting with Azure Resource Manager, giving you the tools to easily create and orchestrate infrastructure on the Microsoft Azure Cloud.
Using the Azure Resource Manager modules requires having specific Azure SDK modules installed on the host running Ansible.
$ pip install ansible[azure]
If you are running Ansible from source, you can install the dependencies from the root directory of the Ansible repo.
$ pip install .[azure]
Using the Azure Resource Manager modules requires authenticating with the Azure API. You can choose from two authentication strategies:
Follow the directions for the strategy you wish to use, then proceed to Providing Credentials to Azure Modules for instructions on how to actually use the modules and authenticate with the Azure API.
There is now a detailed official tutorial describing how to create a service principal.
After stepping through the tutorial you will have:
To create an Active Directory username/password:
The modules offer several ways to provide your credentials. For a CI/CD tool such as Ansible Tower or Jenkins, you will most likely want to use environment variables. For local development you may wish to store your credentials in a file within your home directory. And of course, you can always pass credentials as parameters to a task within a playbook. The order of precedence is parameters, then environment variables, and finally a file found in your home directory.
To pass service principal credentials via the environment, define the following variables:
To pass Active Directory username/password via the environment, define the following variables:
When working in a development environment, it may be desirable to store credentials in a file. The modules will look for credentials in $HOME/.azure/credentials. This file is an ini style file. It will look as follows:
[default] subscription_id=xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx client_id=xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx secret=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx tenant=xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
It is possible to store multiple sets of credentials within the credentials file by creating multiple sections. Each section is considered a profile. The modules look for the [default] profile automatically. Define AZURE_PROFILE in the environment or pass a profile parameter to specify a specific profile.
If you wish to pass credentials as parameters to a task, use the following parameters for service principal:
Or, pass the following parameters for Active Directory username/password:
To use an Azure Cloud other than the default public cloud (eg, Azure China Cloud, Azure US Government Cloud, Azure Stack), pass the “cloud_environment” argument to modules, configure it in a credential profile, or set the “AZURE_CLOUD_ENVIRONMENT” environment variable. The value is either a cloud name as defined by the Azure Python SDK (eg, “AzureChinaCloud”, “AzureUSGovernment”; defaults to “AzureCloud”) or an Azure metadata discovery URL (for Azure Stack).
There are two ways to create a virtual machine, both involving the azure_rm_virtualmachine module. We can either create a storage account, network interface, security group and public IP address and pass the names of these objects to the module as parameters, or we can let the module do the work for us and accept the defaults it chooses.
An Azure module is available to help you create a storage account, virtual network, subnet, network interface, security group and public IP. Here is a full example of creating each of these and passing the names to the azure_rm_virtualmachine module at the end:
- name: Create storage account
azure_rm_storageaccount:
resource_group: Testing
name: testaccount001
account_type: Standard_LRS
- name: Create virtual network
azure_rm_virtualnetwork:
resource_group: Testing
name: testvn001
address_prefixes: "10.10.0.0/16"
- name: Add subnet
azure_rm_subnet:
resource_group: Testing
name: subnet001
address_prefix: "10.10.0.0/24"
virtual_network: testvn001
- name: Create public ip
azure_rm_publicipaddress:
resource_group: Testing
allocation_method: Static
name: publicip001
- name: Create security group that allows SSH
azure_rm_securitygroup:
resource_group: Testing
name: secgroup001
rules:
- name: SSH
protocol: Tcp
destination_port_range: 22
access: Allow
priority: 101
direction: Inbound
- name: Create NIC
azure_rm_networkinterface:
resource_group: Testing
name: testnic001
virtual_network: testvn001
subnet: subnet001
public_ip_name: publicip001
security_group: secgroup001
- name: Create virtual machine
azure_rm_virtualmachine:
resource_group: Testing
name: testvm001
vm_size: Standard_D1
storage_account: testaccount001
storage_container: testvm001
storage_blob: testvm001.vhd
admin_username: admin
admin_password: Password!
network_interfaces: testnic001
image:
offer: CentOS
publisher: OpenLogic
sku: '7.1'
version: latest
Each of the Azure modules offers a variety of parameter options. Not all options are demonstrated in the above example. See each individual module for further details and examples.
If you simply want to create a virtual machine without specifying all the details, you can do that as well. The only caveat is that you will need a virtual network with one subnet already in your resource group. Assuming you have a virtual network already with an existing subnet, you can run the following to create a VM:
azure_rm_virtualmachine:
resource_group: Testing
name: testvm10
vm_size: Standard_D1
admin_username: chouseknecht
ssh_password: false
ssh_public_keys: "{{ ssh_keys }}"
image:
offer: CentOS
publisher: OpenLogic
sku: '7.1'
version: latest
If you are not familiar with Ansible’s dynamic inventory scripts, check out Intro to Dynamic Inventory.
The Azure Resource Manager inventory script is called azure_rm.py. It authenticates with the Azure API exactly the same as the Azure modules, which means you will either define the same environment variables described above in Using Environment Variables, create a $HOME/.azure/credentials file (also described above in Storing in a File), or pass command line parameters. To see available command line options execute the following:
$ ./ansible/contrib/inventory/azure_rm.py --help
As with all dynamic inventory scripts, the script can be executed directly, passed as a parameter to the ansible command, or passed directly to ansible-playbook using the -i option. No matter how it is executed the script produces JSON representing all of the hosts found in your Azure subscription. You can narrow this down to just hosts found in a specific set of Azure resource groups, or even down to a specific host.
For a given host, the inventory script provides the following host variables:
{
"ansible_host": "XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX",
"computer_name": "computer_name2",
"fqdn": null,
"id": "/subscriptions/subscription-id/resourceGroups/galaxy-production/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/object-name",
"image": {
"offer": "CentOS",
"publisher": "OpenLogic",
"sku": "7.1",
"version": "latest"
},
"location": "westus",
"mac_address": "00-00-5E-00-53-FE",
"name": "object-name",
"network_interface": "interface-name",
"network_interface_id": "/subscriptions/subscription-id/resourceGroups/galaxy-production/providers/Microsoft.Network/networkInterfaces/object-name1",
"network_security_group": null,
"network_security_group_id": null,
"os_disk": {
"name": "object-name",
"operating_system_type": "Linux"
},
"plan": null,
"powerstate": "running",
"private_ip": "172.26.3.6",
"private_ip_alloc_method": "Static",
"provisioning_state": "Succeeded",
"public_ip": "XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX",
"public_ip_alloc_method": "Static",
"public_ip_id": "/subscriptions/subscription-id/resourceGroups/galaxy-production/providers/Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses/object-name",
"public_ip_name": "object-name",
"resource_group": "galaxy-production",
"security_group": "object-name",
"security_group_id": "/subscriptions/subscription-id/resourceGroups/galaxy-production/providers/Microsoft.Network/networkSecurityGroups/object-name",
"tags": {
"db": "mysql"
},
"type": "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines",
"virtual_machine_size": "Standard_DS4"
}
By default hosts are grouped by:
You can control host groupings and host selection by either defining environment variables or creating an azure_rm.ini file in your current working directory.
NOTE: An .ini file will take precedence over environment variables.
NOTE: The name of the .ini file is the basename of the inventory script (i.e. ‘azure_rm’) with a ‘.ini’ extension. This allows you to copy, rename and customize the inventory script and have matching .ini files all in the same directory.
Control grouping using the following variables defined in the environment:
Select hosts within specific resource groups by assigning a comma separated list to:
Select hosts for specific tag key by assigning a comma separated list of tag keys to:
Select hosts for specific locations by assigning a comma separated list of locations to:
Or, select hosts for specific tag key:value pairs by assigning a comma separated list key:value pairs to:
If you don’t need the powerstate, you can improve performance by turning off powerstate fetching:
A sample azure_rm.ini file is included along with the inventory script in contrib/inventory. An .ini file will contain the following:
[azure] # Control which resource groups are included. By default all resources groups are included. # Set resource_groups to a comma separated list of resource groups names. #resource_groups= # Control which tags are included. Set tags to a comma separated list of keys or key:value pairs #tags= # Control which locations are included. Set locations to a comma separated list of locations. #locations= # Include powerstate. If you don't need powerstate information, turning it off improves runtime performance. # Valid values: yes, no, true, false, True, False, 0, 1. include_powerstate=yes # Control grouping with the following boolean flags. Valid values: yes, no, true, false, True, False, 0, 1. group_by_resource_group=yes group_by_location=yes group_by_security_group=yes group_by_tag=yes
Here are some examples using the inventory script:
# Execute /bin/uname on all instances in the Testing resource group $ ansible -i azure_rm.py Testing -m shell -a "/bin/uname -a" # Use the inventory script to print instance specific information $ ./ansible/contrib/inventory/azure_rm.py --host my_instance_host_name --resource-groups=Testing --pretty # Use the inventory script with ansible-playbook $ ansible-playbook -i ./ansible/contrib/inventory/azure_rm.py test_playbook.yml
Here is a simple playbook to exercise the Azure inventory script:
- name: Test the inventory script
hosts: azure
connection: local
gather_facts: no
tasks:
- debug: msg="{{ inventory_hostname }} has powerstate {{ powerstate }}"
You can execute the playbook with something like:
$ ansible-playbook -i ./ansible/contrib/inventory/azure_rm.py test_azure_inventory.yml
© 2012–2017 Michael DeHaan
© 2017 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/guide_azure.html