Ansible Cloud Content Execution Environment

This is an Ansible execution environment that contains collections to automate cloud infrastructure and supporting collections to help incubate cloud content. It is automatically published to quay.io when new versions of this definition are created.

Dependencies

The following are Dependencies for the build host/system if you intend to build this EE locally. These are not requirements for the collections or dependencies published inside of the container/ee.

• ansible-builder>=3.0.0

Using the Execution Environment

Ansible Automation Platform

Follow these steps to use the execution environment in Ansible Automation Platform:

1. Login to Ansible Automation Controller.
2. Click Execution Environments in the left menu.
3. Click the "Add" button.
4. Fill in the name field: Cloud EE
5. Fill in the image field: quay.io/scottharwell/cloud-ee:latest
6. Optional: Change the pull field Always so that the latest version of the container is pulled if you are using the latest tag.

Ansible CLI

You can reference the execution environment when running your automation locally with ansible-navigator. Use the documentation for ansible-navigator to determine which flags to set for your playbook. However, the three important flags for using an execution environment are:

• --ee: Tells Ansible Navigator to use an execution environment
• --ce: Tells Ansible Navigator which container engine to use
• --eei: Tells Ansible Navigator which image to use

The --pp flag is also useful to tell Ansible Navigator to attempt to pull the container on each run. This is useful since this execution environment is updated frequently.

ansible-navigator run create_network.yml \
--pae false \
--mode stdout \
--ee true \
--ce docker \
--pp always \
--eei quay.io/scottharwell/cloud-ee:latest

Using Container Engines

You may pull the container without building it locally by running the pull command. Use podman or docker based on the container engine that you use.

podman pull quay.io/scottharwell/cloud-ee

docker pull quay.io/scottharwell/cloud-ee

Then, you may enter the container and use it directly.

docker run -it \
--rm \
--pull always \
quay.io/scottharwell/cloud-ee:latest \
/bin/bash

Once inside the container, you can use the Ansible CLI tools. Below is an example of checking the collections installed in the container.

ansible-galaxy collection list

Included Content

Ansible Collections

The following collections are included in this execution environment.

Collection	Description
amazon.aws	Used for AWS automation.
amazon.cloud	Newer AWS collection using the cloud control API.
ansible.utils	Ansible general utilities.
ansible.controller	Used for Ansible Controller automation.
ansible.windows	Windows collection for automating Windows servers on Azure.
awx.awx	Used for AWX automation.
azure.azcollection	Used for Azure automation.
cloud.terraform	Used for automating Terraform with Ansible.
community.aws	Used for AWS automation.
community.general	Used for Proxmox and other community automation.
google.cloud	Used for Google Cloud automation.
lab.aws_infrastructure_demo_config	Ansible Content Lab AWS content.
lab.azure_infrastructure_demo_config	Ansible Content Lab AWS content.
lab.controller_demo_config	Ansible Content Lab Controller configuration content.
linode.cloud	Used for Linode automation.
oracle.oci	Used for OCI automation.
vultr.cloud	Used for Vultr automation.

CLI Tools

The following CLI tools are included in this execution environment.

Cloud	CLI Command
Amazon Web Services	aws
Microsoft Azure	az
Google Cloud Platform	gcloud
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure	oci
Terraform	terraform

The following CLI tools are installed into Python virtual environments (venv). To access them within the venv, run the activation command below.

CLI Command	venv Name	Activation Command
oci	oracle-cli	source /home/runner/oracle-cli/bin/activate

Building the Execution Environment

This execution environment is built from downstream containers. You will need to have a Red Hat account (a free developer account will work) and be logged in to the Red Hat registry in order for this build process to work. Your Red Hat account username and password will be requested when you run this command:

docker login registry.redhat.io

The execution environment also pulls collections from Automation Hub and requires that an Automation Hub token is supplied via the ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_AUTOMATION_HUB_TOKEN environment variable. Ensure that the environment variable does not have any whitespace or extra characters when you set the variable.

Intel or AMD amd64 Architectures

Ansible Builder will function out-of-the-box on amd64 platforms with Podman or Docker.

1. Run git clone https://github.com/scottharwell/cloud-ee.git to clone this repository.
2. Run cd cloud-ee to change into the repository directory.
3. Ensure that you have logged in to the Red Hat container registry.
4. Ensure that you have set the ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_AUTOMATION_HUB_TOKEN environment variable.
5. Run ansible-builder build --build-arg ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_AUTOMATION_HUB_TOKEN=$ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_AUTOMATION_HUB_TOKEN -t <YOUR_TAG_HERE>.

Apple Silicon or arm64 Architectures

The azure.azure_rm collection and Azure CLI use Python dependencies that do not have arm64 equivalents at this time; a pure arm64 build will fail during the build phase. Therefore, building a native arm64 container is blocked.

However, it is possible to build an arm64 compatible container that emulates amd64 to circumvent this issue and eliminates the need to pass a platform flag to the container runtime. This requires Docker to build EEs. Podman does not function with these steps on an Apple Silicon Mac at this time. This process will build a multi-platform container on ARM architectures that will then function on either an amd64 or arm64 platform.

1. Run git clone https://github.com/scottharwell/cloud-ee.git to clone this repository.

2. Run cd cloud-ee to change into the repository directory.

3. Run ansible-builder create --output-filename Dockerfile to create the context directory.

4. Run gsed -i 's/FROM/FROM --platform=linux\/amd64/' context/Dockerfile to ensure that the container will build properly.

5. Run cd context.

6. Ensure that you have logged in to the Red Hat container registry.

7. Ensure that you have set the ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_AUTOMATION_HUB_TOKEN environment variable.

8. Run the commands below to set your own container registry, version, and then build the container.

   export REGISTRY=quay.io/scottharwell
   docker buildx build --no-cache --platform linux/arm64,linux/amd64 --build-arg ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_AUTOMATION_HUB_TOKEN=$ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_AUTOMATION_HUB_TOKEN -t $REGISTRY/cloud-ee:latest --push .

9. Run docker pull $REGISTRY/cloud-ee:$VERSION to pull the image to your machine.

You may now run Ansible playbooks with ansible-navigator natively on your Apple Silicon Mac.