Okay, so lots of folks ask me about this, and there are a number of ways you can do this. 

But if you’re using vmware and redhat satellite for central patch management for your redhat environment.

Then depending on how you patch your systems. If you snapshot every group prior to patching. Then this post will be perfect for you.

Process:

Pre-requisites: Assumed.

Step by Step:

– name: Login into vCenter and get cookies

  delegate_to: localhost

  uri:

url: https://{{ vcenter_host }}/rest/com/vmware/cis/session

    force_basic_auth: yes

    validate_certs: no

method: POST

user: ‘{{ vcenter_username }}’

password: ‘{{ vcenter_password }}’

register: login

 

Note: Okay so what we want to do is find the virtual machine in vsphere by name and then grab its folder value and pass it as a variable so you don’t need to define it statically in your host_var. The main reason is, say you deployed a vm and months later moved it to another folder, your code will likely have the origin folder which would be annoying, and the ansible documentation doesn’t really cover this approach, you basically figure it out as you do it. So im going to save you all time. Here is how you do it. The below will gather vm_facts based on the inventory_hostname

– name: Find Guest’s Folder using name

  vmware_guest_find:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

     validate_certs: no

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

  delegate_to: localhost

  ignore_errors: true

register: vm_facts

Note: It will than gather those facts and find the folder value. You then register the facts to a variable “vm_facts” Now it will spit out what it finds when you do –vvvv when you do your play. From there you can see the folder setting. You now want to set that that folder setting as its own variable that you can pass to another task as indicated below.

.

ok: [ansible-server] => {

“changed”: false,

    “folders”: [

“/SysUnix/Teststuff“

],

“invocation”: {

“module_args“: {

“datacenter“: null,

“hostname”: “vmware.nicktailor.com“,

“name”: ” ansible-server“,

“password”: “VALUE_SPECIFIED_IN_NO_LOG_PARAMETER”,

“port”: 443,

“proxy_host“: null,

“proxy_port“: null,

“use_instance_uuid“: false,

“username”: “svc_ans“,

“uuid“: null,

“validate_certs“: false

}

}

}

– name: “vm_folder – setting folder value”

  set_fact:

    folder : “{{ vm_facts.folders }}”

 

Note: So you can see that the facts has a sub fact called “folders”. We want to pass that by setting that value as its own variable by making it a fact. Ansible way to set variables is setting facts. So we make that value above into a variable “vm_facts.folders” and then pass that into the next task where it asks for folders. This will get around the having to provide the exact folder the vm_resides to create snapshotting for an array of hosts. This section is basically identical to create except the “state” is set to absent

– name: Remove Snapshot

  vmware_guest_snapshot:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

     datacenter: “{{ vcenter_dc }}”

     validate_certs: no

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

     state: absent

     snapshot_name: “Ansible Managed Snapshot”

     folder: “‘{{ vm_facts.folders }}'”

description: “This snapshot is created by Ansible Playbook”

  delegate_to: localhost

.

.

.

Run your playbook: from /etc/ansible

.

Okay, so lots of folks ask me about this, and there are a number of ways you can do this.

But if you’re using vmware and redhat satellite for central patch management for your redhat environment.

Then depending on how you patch your systems. If you snapshot every group prior to patching. Then this post will be perfect for you.

Patching Processes:

Note: There is a step to change the content view of all your hosts and cleaning your yum repos on all the hosts. I have not written a post on this step yet, but you should obviously automate that. I will eventually get around to including it, when I have some time.

Pre-requisites: Assumed.

Step by Step:

– name: Login into vCenter and get cookies

  delegate_to: localhost

  uri:

url: https://{{ vcenter_host }}/rest/com/vmware/cis/session

    force_basic_auth: yes

    validate_certs: no

method: POST

user: ‘{{ vcenter_username }}’

password: ‘{{ vcenter_password }}’

register: login

 

Note: Okay so what we want to do is find the virtual machine in vsphere by name and then grab its folder value and pass it as a variable so you don’t need to define it statically in your host_var. The main reason is, say you deployed a vm and months later moved it to another folder, your code will likely have the origin folder which would be annoying, and the ansible documentation doesn’t really cover this approach, you basically figure it out as you do it. So im going to save you all time. Here is how you do it. The below will gather vm_facts based on the inventory_hostname

– name: Find Guest’s Folder using name

  vmware_guest_find:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

     validate_certs: no

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

  delegate_to: localhost

  ignore_errors: true

register: vm_facts

 

Note: It will than gather those facts and find the folder value. You then register the facts to a variable “vm_facts” Now it will spit out what it finds when you do –vvvv when you do your play. From there you can see the folder setting. You now want to set that that folder setting as its own variable that you can pass to another task as indicated below.

.

ok: [ansible-server] => {

“changed”: false,

    “folders”: [

“/SysUnix/Teststuff“

],

“invocation”: {

“module_args“: {

“datacenter“: null,

“hostname”: “vmware.nicktailor.com“,

“name”: “ ansible-server“,

“password”: “VALUE_SPECIFIED_IN_NO_LOG_PARAMETER”,

“port”: 443,

“proxy_host“: null,

“proxy_port“: null,

“use_instance_uuid“: false,

“username”: “admin“,

“uuid“: null,

“validate_certs“: false

}

}

}

 

– name: “vm_folder – setting folder value”

  set_fact:

    folder : “{{ vm_facts.folders }}”

 

Note: So you can see that the facts has a sub fact called “folders”. We want to pass that by setting that value as its own variable by making it a fact. Ansible way to set variables is setting facts. So we make that value above into a variable “vm_facts.folders” and then pass that into the next task where it asks for folders. This will get around the having to provide the exact folder the vm_resides to create snapshotting for an array of hosts.

– name: Create Snapshot

  vmware_guest_snapshot:

hostname: “{{ vcenter_host }}”

username: “{{ vcenter_username }}”

password: “{{ vcenter_password }}”

     datacenter: “{{ vcenter_dc }}”

     validate_certs: no

name: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”

state: present

     snapshot_name: “Ansible Managed Snapshot”

     folder: “‘{{ vm_facts.folders }}'”

description: “This snapshot is created by Ansible Playbook”

  delegate_to: localhost

.

.

.

Run your playbook: from /etc/ansible

.