Run your first BIG-IP playbook¶

Follow this tutorial to create a pool, add two members to that pool, and assign a virtual server to serve requests to the members in the pool.

You can create your own yaml file to use as a playbook, or follow along with this yaml file.

Creating necessary directories¶

Ansible expects a certain directory structure when it runs. We’ll replicate below what that structure is and that will set us up for the remainder of this tutorial.

$ mkdir -p ansible/inventory/

The above set of directories includes the top-level ansible directory. This top-level directory can be named anything, so we chose to name it ansible.

Under that directory is where we’ll put our inventory file.

Creating an inventory file¶

All Ansible work starts with an inventory file.

For the purposes of this tutorial, it is not necessary to have anything special in the inventory file because we will be specifying our BIG-IP connection information within the playbook itself.

If you want to see more thorough examples of inventory in Ansible, we recommend you refer to inventory documentation found on Ansible’s website.

Let’s put the following text in a new file located at ansible/inventory/hosts.

localhost

Creating the playbook¶

Begin by placing the following in your playbook.yaml file:

---

- name: Create a VIP, pool and pool members
  hosts: all
  connection: local

This playbook will iterate over all hosts defined in our inventory. We only specified a single host (localhost) so that means that Ansible will connect to localhost to run the tasks.

Remember, for this simple example, we are not going to connect to the BIG-IP via our inventory information. For simplicity, we will be defining all that in the playbook itself.

Set connection variables¶

At the time of this writing, the F5 Ansible modules communicate almost exclusively over the REST API of the F5 device. There is one exception to this rule in the bigip_command module, but for now we’ll not go into this.

To facilitate a connection to the remote device, we need to specify these connection parameters.

The pattern we use for this is called a provider. You will typically see us define this with an Ansible fact called provider. Let’s see this below.

vars:
  provider:
    password: admin
    server: 1.1.1.1
    user: admin
    validate_certs: no
    server_port: 443

The above defines a new fact called provider. That fact is known as a dictionary and it itself includes some sub-keys; password, server, etc.

The values of those sub-keys are variables (identifiable by their use of {{ and }}).

Those variables are the same variable names that we defined earlier in our inventory file. This is how Ansible makes use of them in our playbooks.

In the remaining tasks, you will see how the provider itself is passed to the task so that it can connect to the BIG-IP.

Add a pool¶

A pool represents a collection of resources. These resource typically deliver a service that is identical. By assigning them to a pool, the BIG-IP is able to distribute requests among them.

Add the following to your playbook.yaml to create a pool called web:

tasks:
  - name: Create a pool
    bigip_pool:
      provider: "{{ provider }}"
      lb_method: ratio-member
      name: web
      slow_ramp_time: 120
    delegate_to: localhost

Add two pool members¶

Now you want to create the pool members in your BIG-IP configuration. Members represent where the traffic coming through a virtual server will eventually land. They could be physical gear, VMs, or other devices.

To add the two members, put the following in your playbook.yaml file:

- name: Add members to pool
  bigip_pool_member:
    provider: "{{ provider }}"
    description: "webserver {{ item.name }}"
    host: "{{ item.host }}"
    name: "{{ item.name }}"
    pool: web
    port: 80
  with_items:
    - host: 10.10.10.10
      name: web01
    - host: 10.10.10.20
      name: web02
  delegate_to: localhost

Note

The remaining tasks must align vertically with the Add a pool task above. If the spacing doesn’t line up, Ansible will raise an error.

Add a virtual server¶

Now that you created your pool and the nodes are members of that pool, you want to create a virtual IP address so that external requests go to the pool members.

The following example uses 172.16.10.108 as the external address, so you likely need to change it for your own environment.

To create a virtual server, add the following to your playbook.yaml file:

- name: Create a VIP
  bigip_virtual_server:
    provider: "{{ provider }}"
    description: foo-vip
    destination: 172.16.10.108
    name: vip-1
    pool: web
    port: 80
    snat: Automap
    profiles:
      - http
      - clientssl
  delegate_to: localhost

Run the playbook¶

We can now run our playbook. We will run this from the top-level ansible directory. Refer to the command below.

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts playbook.yaml

If you followed the above steps correctly, you should see output similar to what is shown below.

PLAY [Create a VIP, pool and pool members] ***********************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] *******************************************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [Create a pool] *********************************************************************
changed: [localhost -> localhost]

TASK [Add members to pool] ***************************************************************
changed: [localhost -> localhost] => (item={u'host': u'10.10.10.10', u'name': u'web01'})
changed: [localhost -> localhost] => (item={u'host': u'10.10.10.20', u'name': u'web02'})

TASK [Create a VIP] **********************************************************************
changed: [localhost -> localhost]

PLAY RECAP *******************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=4    changed=3    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0

Congrats if you’ve gotten this far!

More info¶

Curious what else is possible with the current modules? Interested in test-driving the modules under development? Refer to the sidebar for links relevant to your interests.

Want to know the difference between delegate_to and connection:local? See Connection or delegation.

Want to know more about Ansible and how you can expand from here? Refer to the Ansible documentation at https://docs.ansible.com

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