Recently I came across a requirement wherein we were supposed to do the end-to-end automation in the Azure virtual machine. The requirement was to:
- Install and configure Virtual Machine: Installing and configuring Virtual Machine, Open specific ports, and VM template.
- Install Mongo DB software and perform post-install configurations: Installing Mongo DB and then configure it based on standard best practices. Restore Mongo DB Data, create users and perform post-install configurations.
- Install Tomcat and carry out the application-specific configurations: Deploy Tomcat and configure manager and admin access. Perform application-specific post-install configurations.
- Install and configure application-specific configurations: Deploy application binaries, change application files as per software requirements like URL, etc.
Here is the step-by-step video demo and instructions.
1. Create a CentOS 8.X VM in Azure with a Static IP address
First, we need to create Azure VM and then install an Ansible controller on the newly built VM.
2. Execute pre-installation tasks on the VM.
We need to execute pre-installation steps so we can install ansible :
dnf update
which python3
alternatives --set python /usr/bin/python3
python
pip3 --version
yum install python3-devel
yum groupinstall 'development tools'
pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 --version
3. Installing Ansible on Virtual Machine for Azure Automation
We need to install ansible with PIp and when you use PIP for ansible installation you will not have the ansible.cfg file so you need to create this directory structure /etc/ansible/ and then copy the ansible.cfg from this link. https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/examples/ansible.cfg once the cfg file content is copied we need to change the deprecation_warnings = False.
pip3 install ansible[azure]
ansible-galaxy collection install azure.azcollection
ansible --version
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible-collections/azure/dev/requirements-azure.txt
pip3 install -r requirements-azure.txt
pip install msrestazure
vi /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
#Update this value in the cfg file
deprecation_warnings = False
4. Create Azure Credentials to login to Azure via Ansible
Ansible uses the Azure service principle to execute the commands on azure. So we need to execute these commands in azure-CLI (you can use Azure portal) to create the service principle.
Step1: az ad sp create-for-rbac –name ansible
The above command will provide the app ID put the appid in the following command and execute it
Step 2: az role assignment create –assignee <appID> –role Contributor
Step3: az account show –query ‘{tenantId:tenantId,subscriptionid:id}’;
Step4: Create Service principal secret as shown below:
Now populate the credential file with subscription, client_id, secret, and tenant info retrieved from the above sections. First, we need to create the azure directory in this path ~/.azure. then we need to create the credential file.
mkdir ~/.azure
vi ~/.azure/credentials
#Now copy these settings into the credentials file
[default]
subscription_id=<your-subscription_id>
client_id=<security-principal-appid>
secret=<security-principal-password>
tenant=<security-principal-tenant>
5. Creating Ansible Automation Playbook
We have used ansible playbooks to create the Azure Virtual Machine with service principles. The entire code can be accessed from the GitHub repo: https://github.com/rajaniesh/dynamic-azure-automation
5.1 Deploy_vm_and_software Playbook.
This is the main playbook that creates the azure VM and imports other playbooks provided below. This is the main controller playbook. In this playbook, we have populated azure VM-specific variables and used them while creating the VM. We have used add host task in ansible to dynamically create the in-memory inventory since we do not know the IP address of the VM beforehand.
Once we have the IP address we can use that IP address to log in to the VM and deploy the software via roles. I have created two roles:
- MongoDB deployment role
- Tomcat deployment role
- name: Create Azure VM
hosts: localhost
vars:
FinalUrl: :8080/
httpString: http://
teamsMsg:
ipaddressToSend:
teamsMsgToSend:
resource_group: rg_az_dynamic_automation
azure_location: eastus
vnet_name: azure_vnet
address_prefix: "10.0.0.0/16"
subnet_prefix: "10.0.1.0/24"
public_ip_name: vm_public_ip
nsg_name: az_NSG
nic_name: az_NIC
vm_name: azautomationvm
username: azureuser
password: Welcome@123456
vm_offer_name: UbuntuServer
vm_publisher_name: Canonical
vm_sku_name: '18.04-LTS'
size_of_vm: Standard_DS1_v2
connection: local
tasks:
- name: Create resource group
azure_rm_resourcegroup:
name: "{{resource_group}}"
location: "{{azure_location}}"
- name: Create virtual network
azure_rm_virtualnetwork:
resource_group: "{{resource_group}}"
name: "{{vnet_name}}"
address_prefixes: "{{address_prefix}}"
- name: Add subnet
azure_rm_subnet:
resource_group: "{{resource_group}}"
name: default
address_prefix: "{{subnet_prefix}}"
virtual_network: "{{vnet_name}}"
- name: Create public IP address
azure_rm_publicipaddress:
resource_group: "{{resource_group}}"
allocation_method: Static
name: "{{public_ip_name}}"
register: output_ip_address
- name: Dump public IP for VM which will be created
debug:
msg: "The public IP is {{ output_ip_address.state.ip_address }}."
- name: Create Network Security Group that allows SSH
azure_rm_securitygroup:
resource_group: "{{resource_group}}"
name: "{{nsg_name}}"
rules:
- name: SSH
protocol: Tcp
destination_port_range: 22
access: Allow
priority: 1001
direction: Inbound
- name: allow-tomcat
protocol: Tcp
destination_port_range: 8080
access: Allow
priority: 1002
direction: Inbound
- name: allow-MongoDB
protocol: Tcp
destination_port_range: 27017
access: Allow
priority: 1003
direction: Inbound
- name: Create virtual network interface card
azure_rm_networkinterface:
resource_group: "{{resource_group}}"
name: "{{nic_name}}"
virtual_network: "{{vnet_name}}"
subnet: default
public_ip_name: "{{public_ip_name}}"
security_group: "{{nsg_name}}"
- name: Create VM
azure_rm_virtualmachine:
resource_group: "{{resource_group}}"
name: "{{vm_name}}"
vm_size: "{{size_of_vm}}"
admin_username: "{{username}}"
admin_password: "{{password}}"
network_interfaces: "{{nic_name}}"
image:
offer: "{{vm_offer_name}}"
publisher: "{{vm_publisher_name}}"
sku: "{{vm_sku_name}}"
version: latest
- name: add host
add_host:
name: vmServer
ansible_ssh_host: "{{output_ip_address.state.ip_address}}"
groups: vm
ansible_connection: ssh
ansible_ssh_pass: Welcome@123456
- name: set teamsMsg
set_fact:
teamsMsg: "{{httpString + output_ip_address.state.ip_address + FinalUrl}}"
- name: set ipaddressToSend
set_fact:
ipaddressToSend: "{{output_ip_address.state.ip_address}}"
- name: Creating a vmtargetIPAddress.txt
copy:
dest: "/home/azureuser/vmtargetIPAddress.txt"
content: |
"{{ipaddressToSend}}"
- name: Import install_softwares.yml playbook
import_playbook: install_softwares.yml
- name: Include WebHook playbook
import_playbook: teams_webhooks.yml
vars:
teamsMsgToSend: "{{teamsMsg}}"
- name: Import Delete IP address
import_playbook: deleteIPaddress.yml
5.2 DeleteIPaddress Playbook
DeleteIP address playbook is used to delete the IP address file. While creating the VM we are storing the IP address of the newly created VM in the text file and later on we are using this IP address to send the messages to the Teams webhook. Once the playbook is executed we are deleting this file so that when the next time playbook runs it generates the new IP address instead of using the old IP address.
---
- name: Delete IP address file
hosts: localhost
tasks:
- name: set address variable
set_fact:
address: "{{lookup('file', '/home/azureuser/vmtargetIPAddress.txt') }}"
- name: update address variable
set_fact:
address: "{{address | replace('\"','') }}"
- name: Display the Application URL
debug:
msg: " The sketch url is : http://{{address }}:8080"
- name: delete IPAddress file
file:
path: /home/azureuser/vmtargetIPAddress.txt
state: absent
5.3 Install_softwares playbook
Install_softwares playbook is used to deploy MongoDB and Tomcat via ansible roles. Ansible provides the prewritten roles in ansible-galaxy and you can use preexisting roles from ansible-galaxy.
I have created two ansible roles to deploy the software:
- MongoDB deployment role
- Tomcat deployment role
---
- name: install Mongo and Tomcat
hosts: vm
become: yes
become_method: sudo # Set become method
remote_user: azureuser # Update username for remote server
vars:
tomcat_ver: 9.0.30 # Tomcat version to install
ui_manager_user: manager # User who can access the UI manager section only
ui_manager_pass: Str0ngManagerP@ssw3rd # UI manager user password
ui_admin_username: admin # User who can access bpth manager and admin UI sections
ui_admin_pass: Str0ngAdminP@ssw3rd
# UI admin password
roles:
- install_mongodb
- install_tomcat
You can extend this code by adding your own software deployment logic.
Beyond the Horizon... 