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.
Requirements
------------
Using the Azure modules requires having `Azure Python SDK <https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python>`_
installed on the host running Ansible. You will need to have >= v2.0.0RC2 installed. The simplest way to install the
SDK is via pip:
..code-block:: bash
$ pip install azure==2.0.0rc2
Authenticating with Azure
-------------------------
Using the Azure modules requires authenticating with the Azure API. You can choose from two authentication strategies:
* Active Directory Username/Password
* Service Principal Credentials
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.
Using Service Principal
.......................
There is now a detailed official tutorial describing `how to create a service principal <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/resource-group-create-service-principal-portal/>`_.
After stepping through the tutorial you will have:
* Your Client ID, which is found in the “client id” box in the “Configure” page of your application in the Azure portal
* Your Secret key, generated when you created the application. You cannot show the key after creation.
If you lost the key, you must create a new one in the “Configure” page of your application.
* And finally, a tenant ID. It’s a UUID (e.g. ABCDEFGH-1234-ABCD-1234-ABCDEFGHIJKL) pointing to the AD containing your
application. You will find it in the URL from within the Azure portal, or in the “view endpoints” of any given URL.
Using Active Directory Username/Password
........................................
To create an Active Directory username/password:
* Connect to the Azure Classic Portal with your admin account
* Create a user in your default AAD. You must NOT activate Multi-Factor Authentication
* Go to Settings - Administrators
* Click on Add and enter the email of the new user.
* Check the checkbox of the subscription you want to test with this user.
* Login to Azure Portal with this new user to change the temporary password to a new one. You will not be able to use the
temporary password for OAuth login.
Providing Credentials to Azure Modules
......................................
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.
Using Environment Variables
```````````````````````````
To pass service principal credentials via the environment, define the following variables:
* AZURE_CLIENT_ID
* AZURE_SECRET
* AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID
* AZURE_TENANT
To pass Active Directory username/password via the environment, define the following variables:
* AZURE_AD_USER
* AZURE_PASSWORD
* AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID
Storing in a File
`````````````````
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:
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.
Passing as Parameters
`````````````````````
If you wish to pass credentials as parameters to a task, use the following parameters for service principal:
* client_id
* secret
* subscription_id
* tenant
Or, pass the following parameters for Active Directory username/password:
* ad_user
* password
* subscription_id
Creating Virtual Machines
-------------------------
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.
Creating Individual Components
..............................
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:
..code-block:: yaml
- 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.
Creating a Virtual Machine with Default Options
...............................................
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:
..code-block:: yaml
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
Dynamic Inventory Script
------------------------
If you are not familiar with Ansible's dynamic inventory scripts, check out `Intro to Dynamic Inventory <http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_dynamic_inventory.html>`_.
