Installation

Pre-requisite

OpenStack Ansible modules and PowerVC custom ansible modules use openstacksdk python libraries to perform operations in PowerVC. OpenStack SDK must be installed before proceeding with the playbook execution.

OpenStack SDK can be installed by using the pip install openstacksdk command.

Below are the commands to install OpenStack and PowerVC ansible collections.

=> pip3 install openstacksdk

=> ansible-galaxy collection install openstack.cloud

=> Followed by ibm.powervc collection (ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.powervc). Detailed steps for the collection installation mentioned below.

You can install the IBM PowerVC collection using one of these options: Ansible Galaxy or a local build.

For more information on installing collections, see using collections.

Ansible Galaxy

Galaxy enables you to quickly configure your automation project with content from the Ansible community.

Galaxy provides prepackaged units of work known as collections. You can use the ansible-galaxy command with the option install to install a collection on your system (control node) hosted in Galaxy.

By default, the ansible-galaxy command installs the latest available collection, but you can add a version identifier to install a specific version. Before installing a collection from Galaxy, review all the available versions. Periodically, new releases containing enhancements and features you might be interested in become available.

The ansible-galaxy command ignores any pre-release versions unless the == range identifier is set to that pre-release version. A pre-release version is denoted by appending a hyphen and a series of dot separated identifiers immediately following the patch version. The IBM PowerVC collection releases collections with the pre-release naming convention such as 1.0.0- that would require a range identifier.

Here is an example of installing a pre-release collection:

$ ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.powervc:==1.0.0

If you have installed a prior version, you must overwrite an existing collection with the --force option.

Here are a few examples of installing the IBM PowerVC collection:

$ ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.powervc
$ ansible-galaxy collection install -f ibm.powervc
$ ansible-galaxy collection install --force ibm.powervc

The collection installation progress will be output to the console. Note the location of the installation so that you can review other content included with the collection, such as the sample playbook. By default, collections are installed in ~/.ansible/collections; see the sample output.

Process install dependency map
Starting collection install process
Installing 'ibm.powervc:1.0.0' to '/Users/user/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/powervc'

After installation, the collection content will resemble this hierarchy: :

├── collections/
│  ├── ansible_collections/
│      ├── ibm/
│          ├── powervc/
│              ├── docs/
│              ├── playbooks/
│              ├── plugins/
│                  ├── module_utils/
│                  ├── modules/

You can use the -p option with ansible-galaxy to specify the installation path, such as:

$ ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.powervc -p /home/ansible/collections

When using the -p option to specify the install path, use one of the values configured in COLLECTIONS_PATHS, as this is where Ansible itself will expect to find collections.

For more information on installing collections with Ansible Galaxy, see installing collections.

Local build

You can use the ansible-galaxy collection install command to install a collection built from source. Version builds are available in the builds directory of the IBM ansible-powervc Git repository. The archives can be installed locally without having to Galaxy.

To install a build from the ansible-powervc Git repository:

  1. Obtain a local copy from the Git repository:

    Note

    • Collection archive names will change depending on the release version.

    • They adhere to this convention <namespace>-<collection>-<version>.tar.gz, for example, ibm-powervc-1.0.0.tar.gz

  2. Install the local collection archive:

    $ ansible-galaxy collection install ibm-powervc-1.0.0.tar.gz

    In the output of collection installation, note the installation path to access the sample playbook:

    Process install dependency map
Starting collection install process
Installing 'ibm.powervc:1.0.0' to '/Users/user/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ibm/powervc'

    You can use the -p option with ansible-galaxy to specify the installation path, for example, ansible-galaxy collection install ibm-powervc-1.0.0.tar.gz -p /home/ansible/collections.

    For more information, see installing collections with Ansible Galaxy.

Refer https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/installation_guide/intro_installation.html and https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/installation_guide/index.html for Ansible installation details

Configure PowerVC Credentials to interact with Ansible

IBM PowerVC Ansible modules have to be used remotely.

These Modules have to be installed on the remote machine from which it will be connecting to the IBM PowerVC.

Auth information can be passed either in a config file or directly in the playbook.

  1. Passing the auth info in a config file.

    Add the auth related information or credentials in the /etc/openstack/clouds.yaml. Example shown below:

    cat /etc/openstack/clouds.yml

    clouds:
    mycloud:
    auth:

    auth_url: https://<IP_ADDRESS_OF_POWERVC>>:5000/v3/

    username: USERNAME

    password: PASSWORD

    project_name: PROJECT_NAME

    project_domain_name: PROJECT_DOMAIN_NAME

    user_domain_name: USER_DOMAIN_NAME

Note:

Auth information is driven by openstacksdk, which means that values can come from a yaml config file in /etc/ansible/openstack.yaml, /etc/openstack/clouds.yaml or ~/.config/openstack/clouds.yaml, then from standard environment variables, then finally by explicit parameters in plays. More information can be found at https://docs.openstack.org/openstacksdk/

  1. Directly passing the credentials in the playbook.

Please refer the examples related to the aboves in each module playbook examples section.