azure_terraform_deployment

This is the template that will deploy Ansible on Azure. While this template will work with any Ansible deployment on Azure, this is intended to be a starting point for customers that purchase Ansible Automation Platform subscriptions from the Azure marketplace. Take this template and enhance/improve/update based on the resources that you need for your AAP deployment.

Introduction

This template performs the following actions in the order listed.

Step	Description
Create a deployment ID	Creates a random string that will be used in tagging for correlating the resources used with a deployment of AAP.
Create a resource group	Creates a resource group to contain all of the related resources for the AAP installation.
Create a virtual network	Creates a virtual network with a CIDR block that can contain the subnets that will be created.
Create subnets	Creates the subnets for automation controller, execution environments, private automation hub, and Event-Driven Ansible.
Create the private DNS zone	Creates the private DNS zone for PostgreSQL.
Create a network security group	Creates a security group that allows AAP ports within the VNET and HTTPS and automation mesh ports externally.
Create a database server	Creates a PostgreSQL Flexible Server and the necessary databases inside of it for the controller, hub, and Event-Driven Ansible components.
Create the controller VMs	Creates VMs for controller, a public IP, and the virtual network interface card with the public IP attached.
Create the execution nodes VMs	Creates VMs for execution nodes (if enabled), a public IP, and the virtual network interface card with the public IP attached.
Create the hub VMs	Creates VMs for private automation hub, a public IP, and the virtual network interface card with the public IP attached.
Create the Event-Driven Ansible VMs	Creates VMs for Event-Driven Ansible (if enabled), a public IP, and the virtual network interface card with the public IP attached.
Register the VMs with Red Hat	Uses RHEL subscription manager to register each virtual machine for required RPM repos.
Update the VMs	Updates each VM deployed with latest kernel and packages.
Setup one controller VM as the installer	Configures the installer VMs with a private SSH key so that it can communicate with the other VMs that are part of the installation process and configures the installer inventory file based on the VMs that were created as part of this process.

Getting Started

This section will walk through deploying the Azure infrastructure and Ansible Automation Platform.

You may also download the this repository from GitHub and modify to suit your needs.

Azure Credentials

This terraform template requires Azure credentials for deploying infrastructure, which can be set in different places, such as the ~/.azure/credentials file above, through environment variables, or the Azure CLI profile. The easiest, and most portable, approach will be to set the following env vars.

• AZURE_CLIENT_ID
• AZURE_SECRET
• AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID
• AZURE_TENANT

This template will need a way to connect to the virtual machines that it creates. By default, VMs are created with public IP addresses to make this simple, but the template may be modified to use private IP addresses if your local machine can route traffic to private networks.

Deploying Ansible Automation Platform

This section will walk through deploying the Azure infrastructure and Ansible Automation Platform.

NOTE: This template is designed to provide a quick and easy setup with default values for the number of instances and instance types. However, these values can be customized to meet your specific requirements.

Checklist

• Download this repository
• Terraform installed locally (terraform)
• Configure the Azure environment variables for authentication
• Ensure you don't have anything else in the resource group that you use (default of specified via an extra var)

Deploying infrastructure

The variables below are required for running this template

Variable	Description
aap_red_hat_username	This is your Red Hat account name that will be used for Subscription Management (https://access.redhat.com/management).
aap_red_hat_password	The Red Hat account password.
infrastructure_db_username	Username that will be the admin of the new database server.
infrastructure_db_password	Password of the admin of the new database server.
aap_admin_password	The admin password to create for Ansible Automation Platform application.

The variables below are optional for running this template

Variable	Description
deployment_id	This is a random string that will be used in tagging for correlating the resources used with a deployment of AAP. It is lower case alpha chars between 2-10 char length. If not provided, template will generate the deployment_id.
infrastructure_controller_count	The number of instances for controller.
infrastructure_controller_instance_type	The SKU which should be used for controller Virtual Machine.
infrastructure_eda_count	The number of instances for Event-Driven Ansible.
infrastructure_eda_instance_type	The SKU which should be used for Event-Driven Ansible Virtual Machine.
infrastructure_execution_count	The number of instances for execution.
infrastructure_execution_instance_type	The SKU which should be used for execution Virtual Machine.
infrastructure_hub_count	The number of instances for hub.
infrastructure_hub_instance_type	The SKU which should be used for hub Virtual Machine.
infrastructure_admin_ssh_public_key_filepath	SSH public key path.
infrastructure_admin_ssh_private_key_filepath	SSH private key path.

Additional variables can be found in variables.tf, modules/db/variables.tf , modules/vm/variables.tf, modules/vnet/variables.tf

Assuming that all variables are configured properly and your Azure account has permissions to deploy the resources defined in this template.

The default resource group is aap_on_azure where all the infrastructure will be deployed. You can change the resource_group by providing -var resource_group="<resource-group-name>" to terraform apply command.

Initialize Terraform

terraform init -upgrade

Validate configuration

terraform validate

Check the plan

terraform plan -out=test-plan.tfplan

Apply infrastructure

terraform apply -var infrastructure_db_password=<db-password> -var aap_admin_password=<aap-admin-password> -var aap_red_hat_username=<redhat-username> -var aap_red_hat_password=<redhat-password>

Confirm to create infrastructure or pass in the -auto-approve parameter.

Installing Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

At this point you can ssh into one of the controller nodes and run the installer. The example below assumes the default variables.tf values for infrastructure_admin_username and infrastructure_admin_ssh_private_key_filepath.

ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa azureuser@<controller-public-ip> 

We provided a sample inventory that could be used to deploy AAP. You might need to edit the inventory to fit your needs.

Before you start the installation, you need to attach Ansible Automation Platform to the system where you're running the installer.

Find the pool id for Ansible Automation Platform subscription using command

sudo subscription-manager list --all --available

Attach subscription to all the VMs

sudo subscription-manager attach --pool=<pool-id>

Run the installer to deploy Ansible Automation Platform

$ cd /opt/ansible-automation-platform/installer/
$ sudo ./setup.sh -i inventory_azure

For more information, read the install guide from https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_ansible_automation_platform/

Uninstall

This will permanently remove all data and infrastructure in the resource group, so only run this if you are sure that you want to delete all traces of the deployment.

terraform destroy

Confirm to destroy infrastructure or pass in the -auto-approve parameter.

NOTE: If you do not unregister each VM from subscription manager before uninstall, for example, by using the following command on all the VMs:

sudo subscription-manager unregister

you can visit https://access.redhat.com/management/systems to remove the systems from subscription manager.

Linting Terraform

We recommend using tflint to help with maintaining terraform syntax and standards.

Initialize

tflint --init

Running tflint

tflint --recursive