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Build Ansible Tower Container

After creating my Jenkins container I thought it would be fun to run Ansible Tower in a container so I created a simple Dockerfile. First you need find out the latest Ansible Tower version: https://releases.ansible.com/ansible-tower/setup/ and update the version variable in the Dockerfile.

Here is my Dockerfile:

...
ARG ANSIBLE_TOWER_VER=3.3.1-1
...

The passwords can be changed in the inventory file:

...
[all:vars]
admin_password='<-your-password->'
...
pg_password='<-your-password->'
...
rabbitmq_password='<-your-password->'
...

Let’s start by building the container:

git clone https://github.com/berndonline/ansible-tower-docker.git && cd ansible-tower-docker/
docker build -t berndonline/ansible-tower .

The docker build will take a few minutes, just wait and look out for errors you might have in the build:

berndonline@lab:~$ git clone https://github.com/berndonline/ansible-tower-docker.git
Cloning into 'ansible-tower-docker'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 17, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (17/17), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (11/11), done.
remote: Total 17 (delta 4), reused 14 (delta 4), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (17/17), done.
berndonline@lab:~$ cd ansible-tower-docker/
berndonline@lab:~/ansible-tower-docker$ docker build -t berndonline/ansible-tower .
Sending build context to Docker daemon  87.04kB
Step 1/31 : FROM ubuntu:16.04
16.04: Pulling from library/ubuntu
7b8b6451c85f: Pull complete
ab4d1096d9ba: Pull complete
e6797d1788ac: Pull complete
e25c5c290bde: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:e547ecaba7d078800c358082088e6cc710c3affd1b975601792ec701c80cdd39
Status: Downloaded newer image for ubuntu:16.04
 ---> a51debf7e1eb
Step 2/31 : USER root
 ---> Running in cf5d606130cc
Removing intermediate container cf5d606130cc
 ---> d5b11ed84885
Step 3/31 : WORKDIR /opt
 ---> Running in 1e6703cec6db
Removing intermediate container 1e6703cec6db
 ---> 045cf04ebc1d
Step 4/31 : ARG ANSIBLE_TOWER_VER=3.3.1-1
 ---> Running in 6d65bfe370d4
Removing intermediate container 6d65bfe370d4
 ---> d75c246c3a5c
Step 5/31 : ARG PG_DATA=/var/lib/postgresql/9.6/main
 ---> Running in e8856051aa92
Removing intermediate container e8856051aa92
 ---> 02e6d7593df8

...

PLAY [Install Tower isolated node(s)] ******************************************
skipping: no hosts matched

PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=125  changed=64   unreachable=0    failed=0

The setup process completed successfully.
Setup log saved to /var/log/tower/setup-2018-11-21-20:21:37.log
Removing intermediate container ad6401292444
 ---> 8f1eb28f16cb
Step 27/31 : ADD entrypoint.sh /entrypoint.sh
 ---> 8503e666ce9c
Step 28/31 : RUN chmod +x /entrypoint.sh
 ---> Running in 8b5ca24a320a
Removing intermediate container 8b5ca24a320a
 ---> 60810dc2a4e3
Step 29/31 : VOLUME ["${PG_DATA}", "${AWX_PROJECTS}","/certs"]
 ---> Running in d836e5455bd5
Removing intermediate container d836e5455bd5
 ---> 3968430a1814
Step 30/31 : EXPOSE 80
 ---> Running in 9a72815e365b
Removing intermediate container 9a72815e365b
 ---> 3613ced2a80c
Step 31/31 : ENTRYPOINT ["/entrypoint.sh", "ansible-tower"]
 ---> Running in 4611a90aff1a
Removing intermediate container 4611a90aff1a
 ---> ce89ea0753d4
Successfully built ce89ea0753d4
Successfully tagged berndonline/ansible-tower:latest

Continue to create a Docker Volume container to store the Postgres database:

sudo docker create -v /var/lib/postgresql/9.6/main --name tower-data berndonline/ansible-tower /bin/true

Start the Ansible Tower Docker container:

sudo docker run -d -p 32456:80 --volumes-from tower-data --name ansible-tower --privileged --restart berndonline/ansible-tower

Afterwards you can connect to http://<your-ip-address>:32456/ and import your Tower license. Ansible provides a free 10 node license which you can request here: https://www.ansible.com/license.

The Ansible Tower playbook installs an Nginx reverse proxy and you can enable SSL by setting the variable nginx_disable_https to false in the inventory file, and publish the container via 443 instead of 80.

Please share your feedback and leave a comment.

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How to delegate Ansible host variables with set_fact

I ran into an interesting issues about making an service account token on OpenShift accessible by another group of nodes when running a playbook. When you run an oc command and register the output, you face the issue that the registered variable is stored under hostvars of the node name.

Normally you can access hostvars from other nodes like you see below:

"{{ hostvars['hostname']['variable-name'] }}"

I came up with something different and more flexible, instead of accessing hostvars[‘hostname’][‘variable-name’] I am delegating the variable to a group of nodes and make the variable more easily accessible there:

---
- hosts: avi-controller:masters
  gather_facts: false

  pre_tasks:
    - block:
      - name: Get OpenShift token
        command: "oc sa get-token <serveraccount-name> -n <project-name> --config=/etc/origin/master/admin.kubeconfig"
        register: token

      - name: Set serviceaccount token variable and delegate
        set_fact:
          serviceaccount_token: "{{ token.stdout }}"
        delegate_to: "{{ item }}"
        delegate_facts: true
        with_items: "{{ groups['avi-controller'] }}"
      when: ( inventory_hostname == groups["masters"][0] )
 
 roles:
    - { role: "config", when: "'avi-controller' in group_names" }

In the following Ansible role after pre tasks, you are able to access the variable serviceaccount_token on any member of the group “avi-controller” and use with the rest of your automation code.

If you like this article, please share your feedback and leave a comment.

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Kube Ops View on OpenShift

This is just short post about Kube Ops view which is a bit older and known for Kubernetes for some time but it is a great status dashboard to visualize a common operational view of your OpenShift or Kubernetes clusters.

The installation on OpenShift is straight forward, follow the steps below:

git clone https://github.com/hjacobs/kube-ops-view.git
cd kube-ops-view/

oc new-project ops-view

oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged system:serviceaccount:ops-view:kube-ops-view
oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged system:serviceaccount:ops-view:default

sed -i 's|namespace: default|namespace: ops-view|g' deploy/auth.yaml

oc create -f deploy/auth.yaml
oc create -f deploy/deployment.yaml
oc create -f deploy/service.yaml
oc create -f deploy/redis-deployment.yaml
oc create -f deploy/redis-service.yaml

oc create route edge --service=kube-ops-view

Example Kube-Ops view dashboard:

Try it out and have fun.

Posted on

Deploy OpenShift using Jenkins Pipeline and Terraform

I wanted to make my life a bit easier and created a simple Jenkins pipeline to spin-up the AWS instance and deploy OpenShift. Read my previous article: Deploying OpenShift 3.11 Container Platform on AWS using Terraform. You will see in between steps which require input to stop the pipeline, and that keep the OpenShift cluster running without destroying it directly after installing OpenShift. Also check out my blog post I wrote about running Jenkins in a container with Ansible and Terraform.

The Jenkins pipeline requires a few environment variables for the credentials to access AWS and CloudFlare. You need to create the necessary credentials beforehand and they get loaded when the pipeline starts.

Here are the pipeline steps which are self explanatory:

pipeline {
    agent any
    environment {
        AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = credentials('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID')
        AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = credentials('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY')
        TF_VAR_email = credentials('TF_VAR_email')
        TF_VAR_token = credentials('TF_VAR_token')
        TF_VAR_domain = credentials('TF_VAR_domain')
        TF_VAR_htpasswd = credentials('TF_VAR_htpasswd')
    }
    stages {
        stage('Prepare workspace') {
            steps {
                sh 'rm -rf *'
                git branch: 'aws-dev', url: 'https://github.com/berndonline/openshift-terraform.git'
                sh 'ssh-keygen -b 2048 -t rsa -f ./helper_scripts/id_rsa -q -N ""'
                sh 'chmod 600 ./helper_scripts/id_rsa'
                sh 'terraform init'
            }
        }
        stage('Run terraform apply') {
            steps {
                input 'Run terraform apply?'
            }
        }
        stage('terraform apply') {
            steps {
                sh 'terraform apply -auto-approve'
            }
        }
        stage('OpenShift Installation') {
            steps {
                sh 'sleep 600'
                sh 'scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -i ./helper_scripts/id_rsa -r ./helper_scripts/id_rsa centos@$(terraform output bastion):/home/centos/.ssh/'
                sh 'scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -i ./helper_scripts/id_rsa -r ./inventory/ansible-hosts  centos@$(terraform output bastion):/home/centos/ansible-hosts'
                sh 'ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -i ./helper_scripts/id_rsa -l centos $(terraform output bastion) -A "cd /openshift-ansible/ && ansible-playbook ./playbooks/openshift-pre.yml -i ~/ansible-hosts"'
                sh 'ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -i ./helper_scripts/id_rsa -l centos $(terraform output bastion) -A "cd /openshift-ansible/ && ansible-playbook ./playbooks/openshift-install.yml -i ~/ansible-hosts"'
            }
        }        
        stage('Run terraform destroy') {
            steps {
                input 'Run terraform destroy?'
            }
        }
        stage('terraform destroy') {
            steps {
                sh 'terraform destroy -force '
            }
        }
    }
}

Let’s trigger the pipeline and look at the progress of the different steps.

The first step preparing the workspace is very quick and the pipeline is waiting for an input to run terraform apply:

Just click on proceed to continue:

After the AWS and CloudFlare resources are created with Terraform, it continues with the next step installing OpenShift 3.11 on the AWS instances:

By this point the OpenShift installation is completed.

You can continue and login to the console-paas.. and continue doing your testing on OpenShift.

Terraform not only created all the AWS resources it also configured the necessary CNAME on CloudFlare DNS to point to the AWS load balancers.

Once you are finished with your OpenShift testing you can go back into Jenkins pipeline and commit to destroy the environment again:

Running terraform destroy:

The pipeline completed successfully:

I hope this was in interesting post and let me know if you like it and want to see more of these. I am planning some improvements to integrate a validation step in the pipeline, to create a project and build, and deploy container on OpenShift automatically.

Please share your feedback and leave a comment.

Posted on

Build Jenkins Container with Terraform and Ansible

I thought it might be interesting to show how to build a Docker container running Jenkins and tools like Terraform and Ansible. I am planning to use a Jenkins pipeline to deploy my OpenShift 3.11 example on AWS using Terraform and Ansible but more about this in the next post.

I am using the source Dockerfile from Jenkins and modified it, and added Ansible and Terraform: https://github.com/jenkinsci/docker. Below you see a few variables you might need to change depending on the version you are trying to use or where to place the volume mount. Have a look here for the latest Jenkins version: https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/download/war/.

Here is my Dockerfile:

...
ARG JENKINS_HOME=/var/jenkins_home
...
ENV TERRAFORM_VERSION=0.11.10
... 
ARG JENKINS_VERSION=2.151
ENV JENKINS_VERSION $JENKINS_VERSION
...
ARG JENKINS_SHA=a4335cc626c1f64da61a20174af654283d171b255a928bbacb6402a315e213d7
...

Let’s start and clone my Jenkins Docker repository  and run docker build:

git clone https://github.com/berndonline/docker-jenkins.git && cd ./docker-jenkins/
docker build -t berndonline/jenkins .

The docker build will take a few minutes, just wait and look out for error you might have with the build:

berndonline@lab:~/docker-jenkins$ docker build -t berndonline/jenkins .
Sending build context to Docker daemon  141.3kB
Step 1/51 : FROM openjdk:8-jdk
8-jdk: Pulling from library/openjdk
54f7e8ac135a: Pull complete
d6341e30912f: Pull complete
087a57faf949: Pull complete
5d71636fb824: Pull complete
9da6b28682cf: Pull complete
203f1094a1e2: Pull complete
ee38d9f85cf6: Pull complete
7f692fae02b6: Pull complete
eaa976dc543c: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:94bbc3357f995dd37986d8da0f079a9cd4b99969a3c729bad90f92782853dea7
Status: Downloaded newer image for openjdk:8-jdk
 ---> c14ba9d23b3a
Step 2/51 : USER root
 ---> Running in c78f75ca3d5a
Removing intermediate container c78f75ca3d5a
 ---> f2c6bb7538ea
Step 3/51 : RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y git curl && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
 ---> Running in 4cc857e12f50
Ign:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch InRelease
Get:2 http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates InRelease [94.3 kB]
Get:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-updates InRelease [91.0 kB]
Get:4 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch Release [118 kB]
Get:5 http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates/main amd64 Packages [459 kB]
Get:6 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch Release.gpg [2434 B]
Get:7 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-updates/main amd64 Packages [5152 B]
Get:8 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages [7089 kB]
Fetched 7859 kB in 1s (5540 kB/s)
Reading package lists...
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...

...

Step 49/51 : ENTRYPOINT ["/sbin/tini", "--", "/usr/local/bin/jenkins.sh"]
 ---> Running in 28da7c4bf90a
Removing intermediate container 28da7c4bf90a
 ---> f380f1a6f06f
Step 50/51 : COPY plugins.sh /usr/local/bin/plugins.sh
 ---> 82871f0df0dc
Step 51/51 : COPY install-plugins.sh /usr/local/bin/install-plugins.sh
 ---> feea9853af70
Successfully built feea9853af70
Successfully tagged berndonline/jenkins:latest
berndonline@lab:~/jenkins-docker$

The Docker container is successfully build:

berndonline@lab:~/docker-jenkins$ docker images
REPOSITORY                  TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
berndonline/jenkins         latest              cd1742c317fa        6 days ago          1.28GB

Let’s start the Docker container:

docker run -d -v /var/jenkins_home:/var/jenkins_home -p 32771:8080 -p 32770:50000 berndonline/jenkins

Quick check that the container is successfully created:

berndonline@lab:~/docker-jenkins$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                 COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                                               NAMES
7073fa9c0cd4        berndonline/jenkins   "/sbin/tini -- /usr/…"   5 days ago          Up 7 seconds        0.0.0.0:32771->8080/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32770->50000/tcp   jenkins

Afterwards you can connect to http://<your-ip-address>:32771/ and do the initial Jenkins configuration, like changing admin password and install needed plugins. I recommend putting an Nginx reverse proxy with SSL infront to secure Jenkins properly.

So what about updates or changing the configuration? – Pretty easy; because we are using a Docker bind mount to /var/jenkins_home/, all the Jenkins related data is stored on the local file system of your server and you can re-create or re-build the container at anytime.

I hope you like this article about how to create your down Jenkins Docker container. In my next post I will create a very simple Jenkins pipeline to deploy OpenShift 3.11 on AWS using Terraform.

Please share your feedback and leave a comment.