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Automating NetApp with Ansible

Senthilkumar Muthusamy

As enterprises make the move to adopt sophisticated next-generation

data center technologies, time to market through the automation of
IT tasks has become an essential element.
To enable this adoption around storage technologies, Ansible and
NetApp have partnered to develop a collection of automation and
storage configuration management modules to easily provision,
deploy and manage NetApp ONTAP, Element and E-Series storage
platforms.
NetApp is a Red Hat Certified Support Module Vendor.
The Ansible and NetApp modules provide idempotent provisioning
for:

• Aggregates
• Asynchronous Mirroring
• Checking Connections
• Disk Pools
• Hosts and Host Groups (Clusters)
• License Management
• LUN Mapping
• QTrees
• Snapshot Scheduler
• Standard Volumes and Flex Vols
• SVM
• Thin Volumes
• Users, User Roles and Accounts
• Volume Access Groups
• Volume Snapshots
• and much more...

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These modules have been qualified by NetApp engineering to ensure

they meet a variety of needs including provisioning, replication and
general management.

Solution Benefits
• With Ansible customers can automate NetApp solutions to
deliver flexible, scalable and highly reliable storage deployment
and management solutions for NetApp ONTAP, Element and E-
Series storage systems
• Roll storage-infrastructure configurations into your CI/CD
processes and application configurations for maximum agility
with over 60 Ansible modules for NetApp.

• Ansible seamlessly unites workflow orchestration with

configuration management, provisioning and application
deployment in one easy-to-use and deploy platform

• Ansible and NetApp enable a lower cost of ownership and ease

of setup by reducing the time to deploy and manage your
storage

• As the only storage vendor to deliver Red Hat Certified Support

Modules, a partnership with NetApp ensures targeted, quality
storage automation modules

• NetApp supported SDKs for ONTAP, Element and E-Series offer

extensibility by making it easier to develop new modules

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AWX Project:
The AWX project—AWX for short—is an open source community
project, sponsored by Red Hat, that enables users to better control
their community Ansible project use in IT environments. AWX is the
upstream project from which the automation controller component is
ultimately derived.
Ansible AWX is the upstream project of Ansible Automation Controller
(formerly Ansible Tower), providing a modern web-UI and API
interface to manage Ansible Playbooks, inventories, Credentials, and
Vaults between your team in your organization. The AWX source code
is available under Apache License 2.0.
1. Login to Ansible AWX.

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2. Once authenticated, it will launch the dashboard.

Add a managed nodes and hosts and

creates an Inventory.

3. Add a NetApp ONTAP cluster in an Inventory.

An inventory is a list of managed nodes, or hosts, that Ansible deploys
and configures.
• Creating inventories to track a list of servers and devices that
you want to automate.
• Using dynamic inventories to track cloud services with servers
and devices that are constantly starting and stopping.
• Using patterns to automate specific sub-sets of an inventory.
• Expanding and refining the connection methods Ansible uses
for your inventory.

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4. Select the credentials tab, create credential method.

Select and create the

Authentication credentials

5. Select your credentials type

a. Active Directory
b. AWS
c. ONTAP
d. Ansible Tower and more…

To create a credential, select the

credential type.

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6. Select the ONTAP authentication.

You can select the ONTAP

authentication

Credentials added successfully. These credentials are required for

executing the Playbooks.

Credentials added successfully.

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You can select the credentials using cloud also.

Example of Credentials YAML file with input configuration.

Example YAML file for ONTAP credentials

authentication input values.

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Create a new project and add the required NetApp ONTAP ansible
modules and all YML or JSON files in Ansible.
Git is a distributed version control and Source Code Management
(SCM) utility.

Create a new project and specify the

SCM details.

Understanding Playbooks
Now that we have Ansible installed, let’s understand the special file
that makes things happen. This file is called a ‘playbook’. The
playbook is written in yaml, which is itself a simplified version of json.
A playbook is composed of one or more sections, which each can
contain one or more tasks to run.

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Create and store the YAML play books in ansible project location.

Create a YML or JSON file for

each job to automate.

Sample playbook file for stopping SVM. It will stop the SVM as per the
input details.
For Ex:
1. To run and deploy this needs a credential.
• Cluster Name

• User name

• Password

• SVM Name

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Sample YAML file for stopping the

SVM

Add a template to AWX and initiate the templates.

Ex: Create Cluster Peering.
Provide the following inputs to create cluster peer.
b. Source Cluster
c. Destination Cluster

You can select the job template and

run to deploy.

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Specify the input values to deploy the

playbook job (For Ex: Cluster Peer)

Before initiating the playbook, list the cluster peer details.

Clusters are not peered.

Before initiate the cluster peer playbook,

clusters are not peered.

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Initiate the cluster peering Job Template YAML.

Run the cluster peering job

template.

Select the Source and Destination NetApp ONTAP cluster to peer.

Specify the Source and Destination cluster to

peer.

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Click the preview to check playbook run details.

a. Credential details
b. Inventory details

Job type

Credential

Source and destination cluster

details

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Create cluster peering playbook is running.

It will be using the input values and creates a cluster peer.

Ex: Task-Getting the clusters

intercluster LIF

Job is running….

Template job (cluster peer) created successfully.

All the tasks completed successfully.

Job completed
successfully.

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Login to ONTAP cluster and check the cluster peer status.

Check the cluster peer status on both the source and destination
cluster.

Check the cluster peer status on

both the nodes (ex: onPrem and
remote)

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Creating Source Data Type SVM using Ansible with Playbook Template.
Specify the following input details to create SVM:
1. SVM name
2. Cluster Name
3. SVM DATA LIF
a. IP address and Netmask
b. Node Port
c. Role
d. Access Protocol
e. Source LIF Home Node
4. Aggregate Name
5. Volume Name
6. Share Name
7. DNS and other details.

Creating Data SVM using playbook job

template.

SVM Name

Select the cluster and LIF Home

port

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SVM LIF role, Home Node and

Data Access Protocol

Create volume with input detail.

List the Preview details and run the play book.

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Play book is running and it will create a SVM with a specified detail.

Playbook creating the SVM

with specified input values.

Play book executed successfully.

Volume create task and CIFS

share create task completed.

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Login to ONTAP Cluster CLI and check the vserver and SVM data LIF
details.

SVM (ex:prod) created

successfully.

Data LIF also created.

List the volume and CIFS Share details.

Volume (ex:share)
created.

CIFS share also created.

Access the CIFS share folder.

Access the share folder and create
files.

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Provide the Access credentials to access the CIFS share.

Access the Share folder and create files.

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Create a file (ex:n1.txt).

Create a SVM on destination cluster for DR purpose. Using DR_SVM

playbook to create an SVM.

Create SVM for DR (SVM-DR) with

Dp_destination subtype.

Create a Destination SVM using the following details:

1. Destination Cluster Name
2. Destination SVM Name
3. Workflow
a. Creating SVM peer (ex:Prod and Prod_dr)
b. Creating SVM level snapmirror
i. Source SVM: prod
ii. Destination SVM: prod_dr

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Creating SVM peering and snapmirror

(SVM Level) automatically using playbook
job template.

Login to Destination ONTAP Cluster and check the vserver status.

1. Name: prod-dr
2. Sub-type: dp-destination

SVM created with

dp_destination subtype.

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5 tasks are completed.

List the SVM peer status.

Check the peer status. (onPerm -prod SVM

→ remote-prod_dr SVM)

List the SVM level snapmirror details.

List the snapmirror status.

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Creating Workflow Template:

A workflow job template links together a sequence of disparate
resources that accomplishes the task of tracking the full set of jobs
that were part of the release process as a single unit. These resources
may include:

• job templates

• workflow templates

• project syncs

• inventory source syncs

• Workflows allow you to configure a sequence of disparate job

templates (or workflow templates) that may or may not share
inventory, playbooks, or permissions. However, workflows have
‘admin’ and ‘execute’ permissions, similar to job templates. A
workflow accomplishes the task of tracking the full set of jobs
that were part of the release process as a single unit.

• Job or workflow templates are linked together using a graph-like

structure called nodes. These nodes can be jobs, project syncs,
or inventory syncs. A template can be part of different workflows
or used multiple times in the same workflow. A copy of the graph
structure is saved to a workflow job when you launch the
workflow.

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• It is possible to launch several workflows simultaneously, and set

a schedule for when to launch them. You can set notifications on
workflows, such as when a job completes, similar to that of job
templates.

• You can build a recursive workflow, but if Tower detects an

error, it will stop at the time the nested workflow attempts to
run.

• Artifacts gathered in jobs in the sub-workflow will not be passed

to downstream nodes.

• An inventory can be set at the workflow level, or prompt for

inventory on launch.

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Workflow Visualizer
Ansible Tower 3.1 introduced the Workflow Visualizer
(formerly Workflow Editor), which provides a graphical way of linking
together job templates, workflow templates, project syncs, and
inventory syncs to build a workflow template.

Create a new workflow template. (Use Template tab and add workflow
template)

Create a new workflow template

Workflow name and Inventory

details

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Using Workflow Visualizer, you can define the complete workflow

using the playbook YAML.
For example, In this document I have created DR test (SVM Level DR)
using workflow job.
Following Tasks will perform automatically:
Architecture:
1. Source Cluster: onPerm
2. Source SVM: prod
3. Destination Cluster: remote
4. Destination SVM: prod_dr (dp_destination)
5. Snapmirrored state.

Automated Workflow Tasks:

1. Quiesce the Mirror relationship
2. Stop the source SVM (prod)
3. Break the snapmirror relationship
4. Start the Destination SVM (prod_dr)
5. Configure the DR SVM (prod_dr)

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Configure the DR_test workflow.

Start – Initial Step

Add the workflow task (quiesce mirror) – select the play book job
template.

Add a task quiesce mirror.

Specify the Destination SVM to quiesce it.

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Workflow task added.

Same as add the next workflow task (stop the source SVM(prod) for
test.

Add stop source SVM playbook

to run next automatically.

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You can set the rule for next task to run.

For example, last task completed successfully then it will run the next
task automatically.
Example:
Task1 – Quiesce the mirror
Task2 – Stop the Source SVM(prod) – On – Success then it will
start the task3 (break the snapmirror)

Next run only On Success of last

workflow task.

As per our workflow process, if the

prod SVM was stopped then it will
run the next task(break mirror)

Then it breaks the snapmirror relationship.

Add a break mirror playbook yaml.

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Next to start the destination SVM (prod_dr).

Add the start dr svm job

template playbook to start the
prod-dr SVM automatically after
break the mirror.

Add the configure dr_svm job template play book to configure the
prod_dr SVM automatically.
Workflow template defined by the tasks (job templates)
1. Quiesce Mirror
2. Stop the Source SVM
3. Break the snapmirror
4. Start the Destination SVM
5. Configure the Destination SVM

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DR_Test workflow template created

successfully with the tasks template.

Initiate the workflow template to test DR SVM Level. As defined in

Workflow it will initiate job template. On Success of stopping the
Source SVM then it will break the mirror relationship.

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Workflow template is running and

initiating the tasks as defined.

On Success of the
previous task, it
Quiesce the Stop the source break the snapmirror.
mirror task SVM task

As per the workflow definition all the tasks completed successfully.

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Now you can login to NetApp ONTAP CLI or System Manager and check
the status.

Snapmirror is in Broken-off state.

Destination SVM is Running.

Source SVM is Stopped and LIF

also down state.

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Now access the CIFS share folder using Destination SVM LIF IP address.

Now you begin to see the power that Ansible gives you, and it’s not
limited to just what ONTAP or Element can do. You can use Ansible to
provision storage, and then present that share to a host all in one
playbook.

Example NetApp Ansible LUN Module:

- name: Create LUN
netapp.ontap.na_ontap_lun:
state: present
name: prod01_lun
flexvol_name: Prod_Volume
vserver: svm_senthil
size: 500
size_unit: mb
os_type: linux
space_reserve: true
hostname: "{{ netapp_hostname }}"
username: "{{ netapp_username }}"
password: "{{ netapp_password }}"

- name: Resize LUN

netapp.ontap.na_ontap_lun:
state: present
name: prod01_lun
force_resize: true
flexvol_name: Prod_Volume
vserver: svm_senthil
size: 750
size_unit: mb
hostname: "{{ netapp_hostname }}"
username: "{{ netapp_username }}"
password: "{{ netapp_password }}"

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- name: Create LUNs using SAN application

tags: create
netapp.ontap.na_ontap_lun:
state: present
name: esx_ds_001
size: 15
size_unit: gb
os_type: vmware
space_reserve: false
san_application_template:
name: san-esxi_LUN
igroup_name: Prod_esxi_igroup
lun_count: 3
protection_type:
local_policy: default
exclude_aggregates: aggr0
hostname: "{{ netapp_hostname }}"
username: "{{ netapp_username }}"
password: "{{ netapp_password }}"

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