{"id":59281,"date":"2020-06-09T12:06:23","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T11:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/?p=59281"},"modified":"2021-04-20T14:45:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T13:45:33","slug":"azure-devops-ansible-pipeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/2020\/06\/09\/azure-devops-ansible-pipeline\/","title":{"rendered":"Azure DevOps Ansible Pipeline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; fullwidth=&#8221;on&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.9.1&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221;][et_pb_fullwidth_post_title categories=&#8221;off&#8221; comments=&#8221;off&#8221; featured_image=&#8221;off&#8221; text_color=&#8221;light&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.9.1&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#3d3d3d&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;200px||100px||false|false&#8221;][\/et_pb_fullwidth_post_title][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.0.11&#8243;][et_pb_row _builder_version=&#8221;4.0.11&#8243;][et_pb_column type=&#8221;4_4&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.0.11&#8243;][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243; text_font_size=&#8221;18px&#8221; header_3_text_color=&#8221;#e05206&#8243; header_5_text_color=&#8221;#00a9e0&#8243;]<\/p>\n<p>I thought it was about time that I started to have a play with <a href=\"https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/en-us\/services\/devops\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Azure DevOps<\/a> a little more than I have been doing. One of the things I have always meant to look at in the past is using DevOps to run Ansible playbooks.<\/p>\n<p>However the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuredevopslabs.com\/labs\/vstsextend\/ansible\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ansible Task<\/a>\u00a0recommended by Microsoft has always put me off, the reason for this is that this task requires a Virtual Machine to run Ansible &#8211; this to me always seemed a little overkill.<\/p>\n<p>As I had some time I thought I would sit down and have a look at coming up with a pipeline which executes an Ansible playbook which doesn&#8217;t use the Ansible Task. As I had already done some work with Python based command line tools on Azure DevOps I thought it best to take the same approach as I took with those to my Ansible pipeline.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see, the start of the pipeline is pretty straight foward, I am triggering whenever\u00a0<code>master<\/code> is pushed to, and using, the latest Ububtu VM image:<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_code _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243;]<script src=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/russmckendrick\/ab3c930925873d4eaae75d392bbad658.js?file=01.yml\"><\/script>[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243; text_font_size=&#8221;18px&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>The next step is to make sure that Python is installed, here I am using Python 3.6:<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_code _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243;]<script src=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/russmckendrick\/ab3c930925873d4eaae75d392bbad658.js?file=02.yml\"><\/script>[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243; text_font_size=&#8221;18px&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>So far so good, but the next step had me scratching my head for a little while.<\/p>\n<p>I knew that I was going to connect the Azure DevOps project to my Azure subscription using a service connection which would grant contributor access, I also knew that I didn&#8217;t want to hard code any values in my <code>azure-pipelines.yml<\/code> file, so how could I make sure that the credentials for the Azure DevOps managed service principle could be securely used by Ansible?<\/p>\n<p>After a little trial and error, I settled on the task below:<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_code _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243;]<script src=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/russmckendrick\/ab3c930925873d4eaae75d392bbad658.js?file=03.yml\"><\/script>[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243; text_font_size=&#8221;18px&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>As you can see, I am using the AzureCLI Task &#8211; this takes a few inputs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>azureSubscription<\/strong>: This will be the name of the service connection, as I don&#8217;t want to hardcode any values here I am using the variable <code>$(SUBSCRIPTION_NAME)<\/code><\/li>\n<li><strong>addSpnToEnvironment<\/strong>: When set to\u00a0<code>true<\/code> this will add service principal id and key of the service endpoint as variables<\/li>\n<li><strong>scriptType<\/strong>: As I am using Ubuntu, I set this to &#8216;bash&#8217;<\/li>\n<li><strong>scriptLocation<\/strong>: Finally, setting &#8216;inlineScript&#8217; means that I can define the script within the task<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The inline script uses logging commands to take the SPN variables and set them as variables we can use in later tasks:<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_code _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243;]<script src=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/russmckendrick\/ab3c930925873d4eaae75d392bbad658.js?file=04.sh\"><\/script>[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243; text_font_size=&#8221;18px&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>You may have noticed that ARM_CLIENT_ID, ARM_CLIENT_SECRET and ARM_TENANT_ID are using the variables from the task which is why they are using the\u00a0<code>${variable}<\/code>\u00a0format.<\/p>\n<p>To populate ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID we are using the output of running\u00a0<code>az account show --query=\"id\" -o tsv<\/code>\u00a0which returns the subscription ID, so as we are using Bash the format is\u00a0<code>$(command here)<\/code>.<\/p>\n<p>The great thing about this approach is that because the variables which are outputted by the AzureCLI task are secrets they will always be treated as such so if we were to ever output them they will simply appear as *** though it is important that you are still careful when using them as you do not want the values appearing in any output.<\/p>\n<p>The next step installs Ansible along with the Azure Modules:<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_code _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243;]<script src=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/russmckendrick\/ab3c930925873d4eaae75d392bbad658.js?file=05.yml\"><\/script>[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243; text_font_size=&#8221;18px&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>Now that we have our SPN credentials defined as variables within the pipeline and Ansible installed we can finally run the playbook using the final task:<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_code _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243;]<script src=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/russmckendrick\/ab3c930925873d4eaae75d392bbad658.js?file=06.yml\"><\/script>[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.4.7&#8243; text_font_size=&#8221;18px&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>As the Azure Ansible modules expect the Azure credentials, tenant and subscription IDs as environment variables we are passing this at run time in the format which Ansible expects, AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_SECRET, AZURE_TENANT and AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID &#8211; all of which are populated using the pipeline variables which were set in the Azure CLI task.<\/p>\n<p>Running the pipeline gave me the following output:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-59293 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-1-1024x594.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"594\" srcset=\"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-1-980x568.png 980w, http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-1-480x278.png 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Step &#8211; Install Python<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-59294 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-2-1024x594.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"594\" srcset=\"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-2-980x568.png 980w, http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-2-480x278.png 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Step &#8211; Azure CLI<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-59295 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-3-1024x594.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"594\" srcset=\"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-3-980x568.png 980w, http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-3-480x278.png 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Step &#8211; Install Ansible and the Azure modules<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-59296 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-4-1024x594.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"594\" srcset=\"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-4-980x568.png 980w, http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-4-480x278.png 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Step &#8211; Run Ansible Playbook<\/p>\n<p>As you can see from the pipeline output above, the whole pipeline took just over a minute to run, and 50 seconds of that was installing Ansible itself.<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly the playbook didn&#8217;t do much other than create a resource group called &#8220;azuredevops-rg&#8221; &#8211; however it wasn&#8217;t the playbook I was concerned about in this post &#8211; I just want a good boilerplate\u00a0<code>azure-pipelines.yml<\/code>\u00a0file for future projects.<\/p>\n<p>If you follow along with this post, make sure that when creating the pipeline in Azure DevOps you create a variable called <code>SUBSCRIPTION_NAME<\/code>\u00a0and populate with the name of the Azure Resource Manager service connection your project uses.<\/p>\n<p>You can find the repository used in this post\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/russmckendrick\/DevOpsAnsiblePipeline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">on GitHub<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=&#8221;#e05206&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.0.11&#8243;][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.9.1&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; header_3_text_color=&#8221;#e05206&#8243;]<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">Further Insights<\/h3>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=&#8221;1_3,1_3,1_3&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.6.5&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221;][et_pb_column type=&#8221;1_3&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.6.5&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221;][et_pb_blurb title=&#8221;Got 2 minutes to spare to watch our Managed DevOps offering?&#8221; url=&#8221;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TwRbRWPTIp0&#8243; url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221; image=&#8221;http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Video_Grey-150&#215;150.png&#8221; font_icon_last_edited=&#8221;off|desktop&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.9.1&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; body_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; text_orientation=&#8221;center&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;10px|10px|10px|10px|false|false&#8221; link_option_url=&#8221;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TwRbRWPTIp0&#8243; link_option_url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221; border_radii=&#8221;on|10px|10px|10px|10px&#8221; border_width_all=&#8221;2px&#8221; border_color_all=&#8221;#e05206&#8243; box_shadow_style=&#8221;preset2&#8243; font_icon__hover_enabled=&#8221;off|desktop&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>Have a watch of our short 2-minute video on our Managed DevOps offering &#8211; a modern approach for modern applications.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TwRbRWPTIp0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Watch video.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_blurb][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=&#8221;1_3&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.6.5&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221;][et_pb_blurb title=&#8221;Do you require a DevOps Managed Service?&#8221; url=&#8221;https:\/\/n4stack.io\/azure-service-partner\/managed-devops-sre\/&#8221; url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221; image=&#8221;http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Webpage_Grey-150&#215;150.png&#8221; font_icon_last_edited=&#8221;off|desktop&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.9.1&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; body_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; text_orientation=&#8221;center&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;10px|10px|10px|10px|false|false&#8221; link_option_url=&#8221;https:\/\/n4stack.io\/azure-service-partner\/managed-devops-sre\/&#8221; link_option_url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221; border_radii=&#8221;on|10px|10px|10px|10px&#8221; border_width_all=&#8221;2px&#8221; border_color_all=&#8221;#e05206&#8243; box_shadow_style=&#8221;preset2&#8243; font_icon__hover_enabled=&#8221;off|desktop&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>Our DevOps Managed Services are designed for customers who require a modern operational model for cloud native applications.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/n4stack.io\/azure-service-partner\/managed-devops-sre\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Find out more.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_blurb][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=&#8221;1_3&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.6.5&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221;][et_pb_blurb title=&#8221;How Not to Screw Up Your Move to Azure&#8221; url=&#8221;https:\/\/n4stack.io\/how-not-to-screw-up-your-move-to-azure\/&#8221; url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221; image=&#8221;http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Video_Grey-150&#215;150.png&#8221; font_icon_last_edited=&#8221;off|desktop&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.9.1&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; body_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; text_orientation=&#8221;center&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;10px|10px|10px|10px|false|false&#8221; link_option_url=&#8221;https:\/\/n4stack.io\/how-not-to-screw-up-your-move-to-azure\/&#8221; link_option_url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221; border_radii=&#8221;on|10px|10px|10px|10px&#8221; border_width_all=&#8221;2px&#8221; border_color_all=&#8221;#e05206&#8243; box_shadow_style=&#8221;preset2&#8243; font_icon__hover_enabled=&#8221;off|desktop&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>A deep dive into our experience of delivering hundreds of cloud migration projects, including lessons learned and must-do activities.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/n4stack.io\/how-not-to-screw-up-your-move-to-azure\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Watch video.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_blurb][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.9.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; title_text=&#8221;Bevelled-1920&#8243; background_image=&#8221;http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Bevelled-1920.jpg&#8221; hover_enabled=&#8221;0&#8243; sticky_enabled=&#8221;0&#8243;][et_pb_row _builder_version=&#8221;4.9.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221;][et_pb_column _builder_version=&#8221;4.9.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; type=&#8221;4_4&#8243;][et_pb_team_member name=&#8221;Russ McKendrick&#8221; position=&#8221;Practice Manager (SRE &#038; DevOps)&#8221; image_url=&#8221;http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Russ-McKendrick-300&#215;300.png&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.9.4&#8243; hover_enabled=&#8221;0&#8243; global_module=&#8221;53894&#8243; saved_tabs=&#8221;all&#8221; title_text=&#8221;Russ McKendrick&#8221; sticky_enabled=&#8221;0&#8243;]<\/p>\n<p>Russ heads up the SRE &amp; DevOps team here at N4Stack.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s spent almost 25 years working in IT and related industries and currently works exclusively with Linux.<\/p>\n<p>When he&#8217;s not out buying way too many records, Russ loves to write and has now published six books.<\/p>\n<p>To find out more about Russ click <a href=\"\/russ-mckendrick\/\">here<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_team_member][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Azure DevOps Ansible Pipeline I thought it was about time that I started to have a play with Azure DevOps a little more than I have been doing. One of the things I have always meant to look at in the past is using DevOps to run Ansible playbooks. However the\u00a0Ansible Task\u00a0recommended by Microsoft has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[3354,487,485,486,3106],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[3083,7801,7772,623,7799,3905,7250,7796,12,6818,6817,1264,51,7774,7771,7794,7800,4236],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59281"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59281"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61379,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59281\/revisions\/61379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59281"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=59281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}