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Red Hat is buying Ansible

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Re: Red Hat is buying Ansible

#141

Post by icebraining »

JonnieCache wrote: post #48
ABS wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed a few folks on the topic some time ago and published the results here: https://highops.com/insights/immutable-infrastructure-6-ques... I particularly like the definition that emerged: 'I see it as conceptually dividing your infrastructure into "data" and "everything else". Data is the stuff that's created and modified by the services you're providing. The elements of your infrastructure that aren't mana…

This is all well and good, but the devil is in the details. Like rdeboo says, what happens when you do need to change the datastore config? Databases famously need plenty of care and attention to achieve optimal performance. They are decidedly not fire and forget systems. How do I tweak my postgresql performance parameters in the immutable world?

You could keep Postgres in an immutable image, with only /var/lib/postgres in a separate volume. Upgrading the PG config would just be a matter of unmounting it, replacing the image and re-mounting. (Docker automates this with its "data volumes", but you can do it manually too).

Re: Red Hat is buying Ansible

#142

Post by jjnoakes »

pilif wrote: post #128
devit wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most shell commands are actually "declarative" in a sense. If you run "apt-get -y install foo" that means that you want "foo" to be installed. If it's already installed, it just does nothing. In Ansible, you'd use "apt: name=foo state=present" which does exactly the same thing as the apt-get command, but requires a web search to figure out how to write (assuming you know normal Linux system usage but haven't memorize…

> "apt-get -y install foo" that means that you want "foo" to be installed. If it's already installed, it just does nothing. not really. If you do that it means that you want to update foo to the latest version the system knows about. And other commands fail if the thing they are supposed to to is already done. Like `adducer`. So you could still run it and assume a failure to mean "the user already exists" - but it co…

Again, my advice is to take some time and learn the tools before discussing their strengths and weaknesses.

You missed more Ansible strengths, like detecting changes and restarting only affected services for example. Show me the idempotent shell script which does apt-get to install some dependency, updates some configuration file, and then starts or restarts a service depending on both the current state of the service (was it already running?) and whether the apt-get or config file change actuallly modified things.

Then scale that up. A lot.

There is even more. If you care to learn it before dismissing it.

Re: Red Hat is buying Ansible

#143

Post by justingood »

KarlPlatt wrote: post #78

My experience with Ansible has not been so pleasant. Especially performance is a jobstopper. In my environment it takes 20 min for 12 Servers to be setup with some Redis, Elasticsearch stuff. Quite some become_user directives, but 20 min for this kind of stuff is just not acceptable. After all, application settings needs to be tuned and iterated over, too. My idea was to develop the infrastructure with Ansible, e.g.…

Ansible 2.0 should have some new strategies to speed things up, depending on your requirements: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_strategies.html It will be interesting to see how performance is after it's released.

We eventually settled on having Ansible build an AMI for us that can then be spun up by as part of a Cloudformation template (also initiated by Ansible).

We've actually been moving further and further away from having Ansible handle the configuration management side of things, and deal with Orchestration primarily.

Re: Red Hat is buying Ansible

#144

Post by SEJeff »

justingood wrote: post #140
SEJeff wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""" Using jinja2 for markup compounded the issue in my opinion, as it has no loops and logic is less than obvious """ This comment makes pretty much no sense at all. Example of a loop in jinja2: {% for item in ("one", "two", "three") %} item is {{ item }} {% endfor %} The logic is pure python minus perhaps setting variables ie: {% set name = "dorfsmay" %} {% if name == "dorfsmay" or name.startswith("dorfs") %} You're…

I'd agree that jinja2 has a perfectly fine way of handling loops, but the problem is that functionality only works in Ansible template files. The Ansible playbook can only make use jinja2 filters to act on variables: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_filters.html

Oh no disagreement there. I was just disagreeing with the GPs disparagement of jinja2, which is a limitation of how Ansible was implemented and has absolutely nothing to do with jinja2.

Ansible is great stuff, but some of those decisions were quite weird.

Re: Red Hat is buying Ansible

#145

Post by Sphax »

justingood wrote: post #138
superuser2 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand why an organization would want to use Docker (besides buzzword compliance) if they were planning on mutating running containers. What's the advantage?

I think one thing to keep in mind about Ansible is that it's an orchestration tool that also does configuration management. We've integrated Ansible into our workflows in such a way that it kicks off everything we need to do, even if that involves just coordinating some info between APIs. We don't mutate containers at all - merely get Ansible to make things happen around their deployment and communication.

How do you use ansible to deploy your containers, if I may ask ? We're looking into the docker module right now, but I don't know if it's good or what. Currently we're launching container via systemd and manage the unit files with ansible.

Re: Red Hat is buying Ansible

#146

Post by atsaloli »

piffey wrote: post #134
atsaloli wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of mature, CFEngine has been around since 1993 and is now in its third generation. I just wish they would do a little marketing.

Have you had to use CFEngine in production though? It's atrocious.

I use CFEngine 3 in production and the report collection and instant insight into infrastructure that it provides is quite elegant.

(E.g. http://www.slideshare.net/cfengine/15-nice-reports-with-cf-e...)

For example, I wrote a report to inventory which hosts are connected to Active Directory, and had a pretty pie chart for management in minutes (across 2K+ hosts).

Re: Red Hat is buying Ansible

#147

Post by mverwijs »

nailer wrote: post #104
mattzito wrote: post #55

I think the price point here is about a couple of things: - Chef and Puppet are too expensive for most companies to acquire, and have too much operational cost for too little revenue - Ansible got a strong following in the SMB space, Red Hat probably thinks they can move that upmarket some - Ansible's agentless configuration management has potentially strong applicability in a container world (why do I need a chunky…

Ansible's Python as well, so will integrate well with the rest of RHEL, whereas Puppet was nearly the only Ruby tool in the Unix sysadmin community. Not saying that one is better than the other, just than there's more Python out there in sysadminland.

sidenote: puppet is migrating to clojure.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2687553/devops/puppet-serve...

Re: Red Hat is buying Ansible

#148

Post by d23 »

SEJeff wrote: post #144
justingood wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree that jinja2 has a perfectly fine way of handling loops, but the problem is that functionality only works in Ansible template files. The Ansible playbook can only make use jinja2 filters to act on variables: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_filters.html

Oh no disagreement there. I was just disagreeing with the GPs disparagement of jinja2, which is a limitation of how Ansible was implemented and has absolutely nothing to do with jinja2. Ansible is great stuff, but some of those decisions were quite weird.

Jinja is great as a templating language. I find yaml by itself to be clean and readable. Cram all of it in to the same soup, mix in the global variables, and it quickly turns into a nightmare. It takes what's already a problem in a dynamically typed language and amplifies it.

Re: Red Hat is buying Ansible

#149

Post by bigdubs »

sbierwagen wrote: post #136
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #58

If you're new to Ansible. I've created about two hours of free screencasts on it. It's a very simple to use and understand configuration management tool. https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/43-19-minutes-with-ansibl... https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/45-learning-ansible-with-... https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/46-configuration-manageme... https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/47-zero-downtime-deployme...

Wow, what's with all the spammy replies to this comment?

Either it's a strange coincidence or someone spent a lot of time and care creating astroturfing accounts. All are old, have comments and submissions, seem like real people.

Re: Red Hat is buying Ansible

#150

Post by surapaneni »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #58

If you're new to Ansible. I've created about two hours of free screencasts on it. It's a very simple to use and understand configuration management tool. https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/43-19-minutes-with-ansibl... https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/45-learning-ansible-with-... https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/46-configuration-manageme... https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/47-zero-downtime-deployme...

Awesome. Will watch this weekend. Thanks.
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