..note:: This section of the documentation is under construction. We are in the process of adding more examples about all of the GCE modules and how they work together. Upgrades via github pull requests are welcomed!
Ansible + Google have been working together on a set of auto-generated
Ansible modules designed to consistently and comprehensively cover the entirety
of the Google Cloud Platform.
Ansible contains modules for managing Google Compute Engine resources, including creating instances, controlling network access, working with persistent disks, and managing
load balancers. Additionally, there is an inventory plugin that can automatically suck down all of your GCE instances into Ansible dynamic inventory, and create groups by tag and other properties.
Ansible contains modules for managing Google Cloud Platform resources,
including creating instances, controlling network access, working with
persistent disks, managing load balancers, and a lot more.
The GCE modules all require the apache-libcloud module which you can install from pip:
These new modules can be found under a new consistent name scheme "gcp_*"
(Note: gcp_target_proxy and gcp_url_map are legacy modules, despite the "gcp_*"
name. Please use gcp_compute_target_proxy and gcp_compute_url_map instead).
Additionally, the gcp_compute inventory plugin can discover all GCE instances
and make them automatically available in your Ansible inventory.
You may see a collection of other GCP modules that do not conform to this
naming convention. These are the original modules primarily developed by the
Ansible community. You will find some overlapping functionality such as with
the the "gce" module and the new "gcp_compute_instance" module. Either can be
used, but you may experience issues trying to use them together.
While the community GCP modules are not going away, Google is investing effort
into the new "gcp_*" modules. Google is committed to ensuring the Ansible
community has a great experience with GCP and therefore recommends that begin
adopting these new modules if possible.
Introduction
---------------
The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) modules require both the ``requests`` and the
``google-auth`` libraries to be installed.
..code-block:: bash
$ pip install apache-libcloud
$ pip install requests google-auth
..note:: If you're using Ansible on macOS, libcloud also needs to access a CA cert chain. You'll need to download one (you can get one for `here <http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html>`_.)
Credentials
-----------
It's easy to create a GCP account with credentials for Ansible. You have multiple options to
get your credentials - here are two of the most common options:
* Service Accounts (Recommended): Use JSON service accounts with specific permissions.
* Machine Accounts: Use the permissions associated with the GCP Instance you're using Ansible on.
To work with the GCE modules, you'll first need to get some credentials in the
For the following examples, we'll be using service account credentials.
To work with the GCP modules, you'll first need to get some credentials in the
JSON format:
1. `Create a Service Account <https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2ServiceAccount#creatinganaccount>`_
Set the following environment variables before running Ansible in order to configure your credentials:
..code-block:: bash
GCE_EMAIL
GCE_PROJECT
GCE_CREDENTIALS_FILE_PATH
GCP_AUTH_KIND
GCP_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL
GCP_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE
GCP_SCOPES
GCE Dynamic Inventory
---------------------
The best way to interact with your hosts is to use the gce inventory plugin, which dynamically queries GCE and tells Ansible what nodes can be managed.
Note that when using the inventory script ``gce.py``, you also need to populate the ``gce.ini`` file that you can find in the contrib/inventory directory of the ansible checkout.
The best way to interact with your hosts is to use the gcp_compute inventory plugin, which dynamically queries GCE and tells Ansible what nodes can be managed.
To use the GCE dynamic inventory script, copy ``gce.py`` from ``contrib/inventory`` into your inventory directory and make it executable. You can specify credentials for ``gce.py`` using the ``GCE_INI_PATH`` environment variable -- the default is to look for gce.ini in the same directory as the inventory script.
To use the gcp_compute inventory plugin, create a file that ends in .gcp.yml file in your root directory. The gcp_compute inventory script takes in the same authentication
information as any module.
Let's see if inventory is working:
..code-block:: bash
$ ./gce.py --list
You should see output describing the hosts you have, if any, running in Google Compute Engine.
Now let's see if we can use the inventory script to talk to Google.
..code-block:: bash
Here's an example of a valid inventory file:
$ GCE_INI_PATH=~/.gce.ini ansible all -i gce.py -m setup
hostname | success >> {
"ansible_facts": {
"ansible_all_ipv4_addresses": [
"x.x.x.x"
],
As with all dynamic inventory scripts in Ansible, you can configure the inventory path in ansible.cfg. The recommended way to use the inventory is to create an ``inventory`` directory, and place both the ``gce.py`` script and a file containing ``localhost`` in it. This can allow for cloud inventory to be used alongside local inventory (such as a physical datacenter) or machines running in different providers.
Executing ``ansible`` or ``ansible-playbook`` and specifying the ``inventory`` directory instead of an individual file will cause ansible to evaluate each file in that directory for inventory.
Let's once again use our inventory script to see if it can talk to Google Cloud:
..code-block:: bash
$ ansible all -i inventory/ -m setup
hostname | success >> {
"ansible_facts": {
"ansible_all_ipv4_addresses": [
"x.x.x.x"
],
The output should be similar to the previous command. If you're wanting less output and just want to check for SSH connectivity, use "-m" ping instead.
Use Cases
---------
For the following use case, let's use this small shell script as a wrapper.
..code-block:: bash
#!/usr/bin/env bash
PLAYBOOK="$1"
if [[ -z $PLAYBOOK ]]; then
echo "You need to pass a playbook as argument to this script."
Executing ``ansible-inventory --list -i <filename>.gcp.yml`` will create a list of GCP instances that are ready to be configured using Ansible.
Create an instance
``````````````````
The GCE module provides the ability to provision instances within Google Compute Engine. The provisioning task is typically performed from your Ansible control server against Google Cloud's API.
The full range of GCP modules provide the ability to create a wide variety of
GCP resources with the full support of the entire GCP API.
A playbook would looks like this:
The following playbook creates a GCE Instance. This instance relies on a GCP
network and a Disk. By creating the Disk and Network separately, we can give as
much detail as necessary about how we want the disk and network formatted. By
registering a Disk/Network to a variable, we can simply insert the variable
into the instance task. The gcp_compute_instance module will figure out the
@ -230,45 +240,4 @@ A playbook would looks like this:
Note that use of the "add_host" module above creates a temporary, in-memory group. This means that a play in the same playbook can then manage machines
in the 'new_instances' group, if so desired. Any sort of arbitrary configuration is possible at this point.
Configuring instances in a group
````````````````````````````````
All of the created instances in GCE are grouped by tag. Since this is a cloud, it's probably best to ignore hostnames and just focus on group management.
Normally we'd also use roles here, but the following example is a simple one. Here we will also use the "gce_net" module to open up access to port 80 on
these nodes.
The variables in the 'vars' section could also be kept in a 'vars_files' file or something encrypted with Ansible-vault, if you so choose. This is just
Alex Stephen
6 years ago
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