The Infrastructure-as-Code project is progressing along rather well. When I set out on the project in November of 2017, I wanted to use the project as a means to learn several new technologies — Ansible, Python, CoreOS and Kubernetes. The initial stages of the project focused on understanding how CoreOS works and how to automate the installation of a CoreOS VM within a vSphere environment. Once completed, I moved onto automating the initial deployment of the environment and supporting components. This is where the bulk of my time has been spent the past several weeks.

As previous posts have shown, using Ansible as an automation framework within a vSphere environment is a powerful tool. The challenge has been leveraging the existing, publicly available modules to perform all the required actions to completely automate the deployment. The Ansible NSX modules available on Github are a good starting point, but they have lacked all of the desired functionality.

The lack of functionality lead to me fork the project into my own repo and submit my very first pull request on Github shortly after adding the necessary DHCP functionality.

The process of adding the desired functionality has become a bit of a rabbit-hole. Even still, I am enjoying the process of working through all the tasks and seeing the pieces begin to come together.

Thus far, I have the following working through Ansible:

  • NSX logical switch and NSX edge deployment.
  • DHCP and firewall policy configuration on NSX edge.
  • Ubuntu SSH bastion host deployment and configuration.
  • Ubuntu DNS hosts deployment and configuration.
  • Ubuntu-based Kubernetes master nodes deployment (static number).
  • CoreOS-based Kubernetes minion nodes deployment (dynamic number).

In addition to the Ansible playbooks that I’ve written to automate the project, creating a Docker image specifically to act as the Ansible Control Server, with all of the required third-party modules has really helped to streamline the project and make it something I should be able to ‘release’ for others to use and duplicate my efforts.

The remaining work before the project is complete:

  • Add DNAT/SNAT configuration functionality to Ansible for NSX edge (testing in progress).
  • Update CoreOS nodes to use logical switch DVS port group.
  • Kubernetes configuration through Ansible.

I’ve really enjoyed all the challenges and new technologies (to me) the project has allowed me to learn. I am also looking forward to being able to contribute back to the Ansible community with additional capabilities for NSX modules.