oVirt maintains multiple Ansible roles that can be deployed to easily configure and manage various parts of the oVirt infrastructure. Ansible roles provide a method of modularizing your Ansible code, in other words; it enables you to break up large playbooks into smaller reusable files. This enables you to have a separate role for each component of the infrustructure, and allows you to reuse and share roles with other users. For more information about roles, see Creating Reusable Playbooks in the Ansible Documentation.

The oVirt roles can be divided into two types of roles: Logical roles and Component roles.

Logical roles are used to group component roles, or implement specific scenarios on top of oVirt components.

• ovirt-cluster-upgrade
• ovirt-host-deploy
• ovirt-infra
• ovirt-image-template
• ovirt-manageiq
• ovirt-vm-infra

Component roles enable you to manage the lifecycle of a specific oVirt component.

The ovirt-infra logical role implements the following helper component roles:

• ovirt-aaa-jdbc
• ovirt-clusters
• ovirt-datacenters
• ovirt-host-deploy-firewalld
• ovirt-hosts
• ovirt-networks
• ovirt-permissions
• ovirt-storages

The ovirt-vm-infra role includes the following helper component role:

• ovirt-affinity-groups

There are multiple methods to install the Ansible roles on your Ansible server.

Note: You must have the official oVirt repository enabled. For more information see the oVirt Deployment Options.

The Ansible roles are packaged into an RPM file that can be installed from the command line.

Run the following command:

# yum install ovirt-ansible-roles 

By default the roles will be installed to /usr/share/ansible/roles.

The structure of the ovirt-ansible-roles package is as follows:

• /usr/share/ansible/roles - stores the roles.
• /usr/share/doc/ovirt-ansible-roles/ - stores the examples, a basic overview and the licence.
• /usr/share/doc/ansible/roles/{role_name} - stores the documentation specific to the role.

Ansible provides a command line utility to install Roles directory from the Galaxy Repository. See the Galaxy website for more information about Galaxy.

To install the role using Galaxy, run the following from the command line:

# ansible-galaxy install ovirt.ovirt-ansible-roles

By default the roles will be installed to /etc/ansible/roles.

The structure of ovirt.ovirt-ansible-roles is as follows:

• /etc/ansible/roles/ovirt.ovirt-ansible-roles/roles - stores the roles.
• /etc/ansible/roles/ovirt.ovirt-ansible-roles/examples - stores the examples, a basic overview and the licence.
• /etc/ansible/roles/ovirt.ovirt-ansible-roles/roles/{role_name} - stores the documentation specific to the role.

This section will guide you through creating and running your playbook against the engine.

By default, Ansible only searches for roles in the /etc/ansible/roles/ directory and your current working directory. To change the directory where Ansible looks for roles, modify the roles_path option of the [defaults] section in the ansible.cfg configuration file. The default location of this file is /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg. You may need to update the roles_path option if you installed the roles with the package.

The following example connects to the engine on the local host and creates a new data center. The current working directory is /tmp.

Note: Ensure you have Python SDK installed on the machine running the playbook.

1. Create a file in your working directory to store the engine's user password:

$ cat passwords.yml
---
engine_password: youruserpassword

2. Encrypt the user password. You will be asked for a vault password.

$ ansible-vault encrypt passwords.yml
New Vault password: 
Confirm New Vault password: 

3. Create a file that contains engine details such as the url, certificate, and user.

$ cat engine_vars.yml 
---
engine_url: https://example.engine.redhat.com/ovirt-engine/api
engine_user: admin@internal
engine_cafile: /etc/pki/ovirt-engine/ca.pem

Note: If you prefer, these variables can be added directly to the playbook instead.

4. Create your playbook. To simplify this, you can copy and modify an example in /etc/ansible/roles/ovirt.ovirt-ansible-roles/examples or /usr/share/doc/ovirt-ansible-roles/examples depending on the method used to install the roles:

$ cat ovirt_infra.yml
---
- name: oVirt infra
  hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  gather_facts: false

  vars_files:
    # Contains variables to connect to the engine
    - engine_vars.yml
    # Contains encrypted `engine_password` variable using ansible-vault
    - passwords.yml

  pre_tasks:
    - name: Login to oVirt
      ovirt_auth:
        url: "{{ engine_url }}"
        username: "{{ engine_user }}"
        password: "{{ engine_password }}"
        ca_file: "{{ engine_cafile | default(omit) }}"
        insecure: "{{ engine_insecure | default(true) }}"
      tags:
        - always

  vars:
    data_center_name: mydatacenter
    data_center_description: mydatacenter
    data_center_local: false
    compatibility_version: 4.1

  roles:
    - ovirt-datacenters

  post_tasks:
    - name: Logout from oVirt
      ovirt_auth:
        state: absent
        ovirt_auth: "{{ ovirt_auth }}"
      tags:
        - always

5. Run the playbook.

$ ansible-playbook --ask-vault-pass ovirt_infra.yml

After the ansible-playbook playbook completes you will have a new data center named mydatacenter.