Deploy a Host using Foreman and Ansible, from A to Z¶

This documentation aims to help you deploying a Host using Foreman, it will covers all the parts that you need.

https://camo.githubusercontent.com/d19015df150e21d6782d3fcbe4356a7318cc5b00/68747470733a2f2f7777772e6c696e7578747269636b732e66722f75706c6f61642f616e7369626c652e706e67

Table of Contents¶

Conventions¶

This documentation uses several typesetting conventions.

Notices¶

Notes¶

Note

A comment with additional information that explains a part of the text.

Hints¶

Hint

This is a admonition of type hint.

Warnings¶

Warning

This is a admonition of type warning.

Tips¶

Tip

This is a admonition of type tip.

Seealso¶

Command prompts¶

$ command

Any user, including the root user, can run commands that are prefixed with the $ prompt.

# command

The root user must run commands that are prefixed with the # prompt. You can also prefix these commands with the sudo command, if available, to run them.

Getting Started¶

The Getting started will helps you to set-up your environment and to understand Foreman.

Foreman¶

Foreman is a complete lifecycle management tool for physical and virtual servers. It gives system administrators the power to easily automate repetitive tasks, quickly deploy applications, and proactively manage servers, on-premise or in the cloud.

A Foreman installation will always contain a central foreman instance that is responsible for providing the Web based GUI, node configurations, initial host configuration files, etc. However, if the foreman installation supports unattended installations then other operations need to be performed to fully automate this process. The smart proxy manages remote services and is generally installed with all Foreman installations to manage TFTP, DHCP, DNS, Puppet, Puppet CA, Ansible, Salt, and Chef.

Note

For this documentation, we will only use TFTP, DHCP, DNS and Ansible.

Environment¶

For your tests, I recommand using :

Virtual Machine (with Virtualbox as provider)
Centos/7
Ansible 2.3

Once you have those requirements, you can start learning about TFTP, DHCP, DNS and Ansible.

Services¶

Foreman needs many services for doing his job, this section will introduce you those different services

TFTP¶

Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is a simple lockstep File Transfer Protocol which allows a client to get a file from or put a file onto a remote host. One of its primary uses is in the early stages of nodes booting from a local area network. TFTP has been used for this application because it is very simple to implement.

Note

Tftp is used along with Pxelinux, for booting from PXE.

DHCP¶

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a standardized network protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The DHCP is controlled by a DHCP server that dynamically distributes network configuration parameters.

Note

The server where Foreman is installed is playing the DHCP server.

Ansible¶

Ansible is used for installing Foreman, and then used as a plugin in Foreman for ghatering facts

Note

Playbooks were tested with Ansible 2.3

Overview¶

To understand the use of every service, we’ve got two machines:

The Manage node (where foreman is installed)
The Controller node (the host we want to build)

Tip

When the controller node is booting on PXE mode, the Manage node who’s the DHCP server, will assign to the controller node an Ip address, along with a fileName. The filename is the pxelinux.0 (/var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.0), after that, the controller node try to connect to the TFTP server to download the pxelinux.0 and the pxelinux.cfg and then loading linux image. When the Controller is built, we can deploy playbooks using Ansible.

Installing Foreman¶

Foreman is using a lot of components, and installing them manualy will take a lot of time, so we are using an Ansible playbook to install foreman.

Foreman-ansible-postgres Playbook¶

The foreman-ansible-postgres is a fork of foreman-ansible, that support PostgreSQL and Powerdns.

the playbook contains multiple different roles with numerous customizable variables, which provide the following features:

Setup database (PostgreSQL)
Setup webserver (plain nginx as a proxy or nginx-passenger)
Setup isc-dhcp-server
Setup TFTP server
Setup powerdns
Setup foreman-proxy
Setup Foreman including configuration (templates, hosts, domains, etc.)

Warning

None of the roles will install Puppet or use the official foreman-installer, instead the plain Foreman packages are used!

Note

In addition this playbook makes use of foreman-yml to automatically configure Foreman through the API based on a YAML file, which includes adding all templates, OS, media, hosts, etc. and linking them accordingly.

Supported distributions:¶

Debian 7 & 8
Ubuntu 14.04 & 16.04
CentOS 6 & 7
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 & 7

Github repo¶

You clone the repo from: https://github.com/invicnaper/foreman-ansible-postgres

OS Configurations¶

To avoid errors while deploying the playbook, you have to do some pre-deploy configuration

Note

Those configurations must be done on the manage node

FQDN configuration¶

Open /etc/hostname:

# nano /etc/hostname

and add

<hostname>

Open /etc/hosts:

# nano /etc/hosts

and add

127.0.0.1       localhost
#127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
::1         localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6
<ip>  <domain> <hostname>

Disable SElinux¶

To disable SElinux, open /etc/sysconfig/selinux:

# nano /etc/sysconfig/selinux

write

SELINUX=disabled

Open required ports¶

The required ports are:

67
69
80
443

to open them, use:

# firewall-cmd --permanent -–add-port=67/udp

# firewall-cmd --permanent -–add-port=69/udp

# firewall-cmd --permanent -–add-port=80/udp

# firewall-cmd --permanent -–add-port=443/udp

Playbook Requirements¶

This part will help you installing the requirements for deploying the Ansible playbook

Epel-release¶

Install epel-release using:

# yum install epel-release

Git¶

Install git using:

# yum install git

Install Ansible¶

Install ansible using:

# yum install ansible

Clone the Playbook repo¶

Clone the foreman-ansible-postgres repo using:

$ git clone https://github.com/invicnaper/foreman-ansible-postgres

Deployment Configurations¶

This part will help you configuring ansible and services.

Note

Those configurations must be done on your local machine

Inventory file¶

First, you have to create an inventory file, on your local machine:

$ nano /home/<user>/inventory

and add

<manage_ip>      ansible_user=<user>     ansible_become=true

Configure SSH Keys¶

Generate SSH key¶

Create SSH key using:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096

Copy SSH key¶

Copy the ssh key using:

$ ssh-copy-id <user>@<manage_ip>

Playbook Configuration¶

This part will help you configure services installed by the playbook

DHCP¶

To configure the DHCP server, open vars/examples.yml

and edit the part:

isc_dhcp_server_subnet:
  - netaddress: 192.168.121.0
    netmask: 255.255.255.0
    gateway: 192.168.121.1
    domain: lab.local
    domain_search: lab.local
    dns: 192.168.121.1
    range: 192.168.121.20 192.168.121.100

TFTP¶

To configure the TFTP server, open roles/tftp/default/main.yml

and edit the part:

tftp_dir: /srv/tftp

tftp_pxe_dir:
- boot
- pxelinux.cfg

tftp_hpa_address: "0.0.0.0:69"
tftp_hpa_options: --secure

tftp_xinetd_socket_type: dgram
tftp_xinetd_protocol: udp
tftp_xinetd_wait: "yes"
tftp_xinetd_service_user: root
tftp_xinetd_server: /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
tftp_xinetd_server_args: "--user {{ tftp_user }} --secure {{ tftp_dir }}"
tftp_xinetd_disable: "no"

PostgreSQL¶

Todo

Edit PostgreSQL conf

PowerDNS¶

Warning

Deprecated since version 1.0.

moved to powerdns-playbook.

Foreman-proxy¶

To configure Foreman proxy, open roles/foreman-proxy/default/main.yml:

and edit the part:

foreman_proxy_port: 8000
foreman_proxy_protocol: http
foreman_proxy_bind_host: "{{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}"

foreman_proxy_foreman_url: "http://127.0.0.1"

foreman_proxy_dhcp: true
foreman_proxy_dhcp_protocol: http
foreman_proxy_dhcp_server: 127.0.0.1
foreman_proxy_dhcp_subnets: "[]"
foreman_proxy_dhcp_omapi_port: 7911

foreman_proxy_tftp: true
foreman_proxy_tftp_protocol: http
foreman_proxy_tftp_dir: /srv/tftp
foreman_proxy_tftp_pxe_dir:
- boot
- pxelinux.cfg

Foreman-yml¶

To configure foreman-yml, open roles/foreman-yml/default/main.yml

and edit the part:

foreman_yml_api_url: "http://localhost:80"
foreman_yml_api_username: admin
foreman_yml_api_password: foreman

Foreman¶

To configure foreman-yml, open roles/foreman/default/main.yml

Deploy Foreman-ansible-postgres playbook¶

This part will help you deploying the playbook foreman-ansible-postgres using ansible-playbook

Ansible-playbook¶

To deploy the playbook on your manage node, use:

$ ansible-playbook foreman.yml -i /home/<user>/inventory –ask-become-pass

To test foreman, visit the url:

http://manage_ip/

Extras playbooks¶

This part will present you the extras playbooks that will helps you install Ansible-foreman plugin and smart-proxy-powerdns

Ansible-foreman Plugin¶

This playbook will install the ansible-foreman plugin, so you can use Ansible along with Foreman

Todo

Add repo

Smart-proxy-powerdns¶

This playbook wil install the smart-proxy powerdns, so you can use powerdns as dns provider

Todo

Add repo

Quick Informations ?¶

By Hamza Bourrahim
This documentation use many Ansible playbooks
Tested using Centos
Playbooks tested using Ansible 2.3
The goal of this doc is to help you deploying a Host using Foreman
Done for ABlogix

Deploy a Host using Foreman and Ansible, from A to Z¶

Table of Contents¶

Conventions¶

Notices¶

Notes¶

Hints¶

Warnings¶

Tips¶

Seealso¶

Command prompts¶

Getting Started¶

Foreman¶

Environment¶

Services¶

TFTP¶

DHCP¶

Ansible¶

Overview¶

Installing Foreman¶

Foreman-ansible-postgres Playbook¶

Supported distributions:¶

Github repo¶

OS Configurations¶

FQDN configuration¶

Disable SElinux¶

Open required ports¶

Playbook Requirements¶

Epel-release¶

Git¶

Install Ansible¶

Clone the Playbook repo¶

Deployment Configurations¶

Inventory file¶

Configure SSH Keys¶

Generate SSH key¶

Copy SSH key¶

Playbook Configuration¶

DHCP¶

TFTP¶

PostgreSQL¶

PowerDNS¶

Foreman-proxy¶

Foreman-yml¶

Foreman¶

Deploy Foreman-ansible-postgres playbook¶

Ansible-playbook¶

Extras playbooks¶

Ansible-foreman Plugin¶

Smart-proxy-powerdns¶

Quick Informations ?¶

Screen¶