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Now the reason why you would probably want this is over terraform is because terraform is more suited for infrastructure orchestration and not really suited to deal with the instances once they are up and running.

If you have scaled servers out in OCI powering servers up and down in bulk currently is not available. If you are doing a migration or using a staging environment that you need need to use the machine when building or doing troubleshooting.

Then having a way to power up/down multiple machines at once is convenient.

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Install the OCI collections if you don’t have it already.

Linux/macOS

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oracle/oci-ansible-collection/master/scripts/install.sh | bash -s — —verbose

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ansible-galaxy collection list – Will list the collections installed

# /path/to/ansible/collections

Collection Version

——————- ——-

amazon.aws 1.4.0

ansible.builtin 1.3.0

ansible.posix 1.3.0

oracle.oci 2.10.0

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Once you have it installed you need to test the OCI client is working

oci iam compartment list –all (this will list out the compartment ID list for your instances.

Compartments in OCI are a way to organise infrastructure and control access to those resources. This is great for if you have contractors coming and you only want them to have access to certain things not everything.

Now there are two ways you can your instance names.

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Bash Script to get the instances names from OCI

compartment_id=“ocid1.compartment.oc1..insert compartment ID here“

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# Explicitly define the availability domains based on your provided data

availability_domains=(“zcLB:US-CHICAGO-1-AD-1” “zcLB:US-CHICAGO-1-AD-2” “zcLB:US-CHICAGO-1-AD-3”)

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# For each availability domain, list the instances

for ad in “${availability_domains[@]}”; do

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    # List instances within the specific AD and compartment, extracting the “id” field

    oci compute instance list –compartment-id $compartment_id –availability-domain $ad –query “data[].id” –raw-output > instance_ids.txt

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    # Clean up the instance IDs (removing brackets, quotes, etc.)

    sed –i ‘s/\[//g’ instance_ids.txt

    sed –i ‘s/\]//g’ instance_ids.txt

    sed –i ‘s/”//g’ instance_ids.txt

    sed –i ‘s/,//g’ instance_ids.txt

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    # Read each instance ID from instance_ids.txt

    while read -r instance_id; do

        # Get instance VNIC information

        instance_info=$(oci compute instance list-vnics –instance-id “$instance_id“)

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        # Extract the required fields and print them

        display_name=$(echo “$instance_info“ | jq -r ‘.data[0].”display-name”‘)

        public_ip=$(echo “$instance_info“ | jq -r ‘.data[0].”public-ip“‘)

        private_ip=$(echo “$instance_info“ | jq -r ‘.data[0].”private-ip“‘)

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        echo “Availability Domain: $ad“

        echo “Display Name: $display_name“

        echo “Public IP: $public_ip“

        echo “Private IP: $private_ip“

        echo “—————————————–“

    done < instance_ids.txt

done

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The output of the script when piped in to a file will look like

Instance.names

Availability Domain: zcLB:US-CHICAGO-1-AD-1

Display Name: Instance1

Public IP: 192.0.2.1

Private IP: 10.0.0.1

—————————————–

Availability Domain: zcLB:US-CHICAGO-1-AD-1

Display Name: Instance2

Public IP: 192.0.2.2

Private IP: 10.0.0.2

—————————————–

…

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You can now grep this file for the name of the servers you want to power on or off quickly

Now we have an ansible playbook that can power on or power off the instance by name provided by the OCI client

Ansible playbook to power on or off multiple instances via OCI CLI

—

– name: Control OCI Instance Power State based on Instance Names

  hosts: localhost

  vars:

    instance_names_to_stop:

      – instance1

      # Add more instance names here if you wish to stop them…

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    instance_names_to_start:

      # List the instance names you wish to start here…

      # Example:

      – Instance2

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  tasks:

  – name: Fetch all instance details in the compartment

    command:

      cmd: “oci compute instance list –compartment-id ocid1.compartment.oc1..aaaaaaaak7jc7tn2su2oqzmrbujpr5wmnuucj4mwj4o4g7rqlzemy4yvxrza –output json“

    register: oci_output

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  – set_fact:

      instances: “{{ oci_output.stdout | from_json }}”

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  – name: Extract relevant information

    set_fact:

      clean_instances: “{{ clean_instances | default([]) + [{ ‘name’: item[‘display-name’], ‘id’: item.id, ‘state’: item[‘lifecycle-state’] }] }}”

    loop: “{{ instances.data }}”

    when: “‘display-name’ in item and ‘id’ in item and ‘lifecycle-state’ in item”

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  – name: Filter out instances to stop

    set_fact:

      instances_to_stop: “{{ instances_to_stop | default([]) + [item] }}”

    loop: “{{ clean_instances }}”

    when: “item.name in instance_names_to_stop and item.state == ‘RUNNING'”

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  – name: Filter out instances to start

    set_fact:

      instances_to_start: “{{ instances_to_start | default([]) + [item] }}”

    loop: “{{ clean_instances }}”

    when: “item.name in instance_names_to_start and item.state == ‘STOPPED'”

.

  – name: Filter out instances to stop

    set_fact:

      instances_to_stop: “{{ clean_instances | selectattr(‘name’, ‘in’, instance_names_to_stop) | selectattr(‘state’, ‘equalto‘, ‘RUNNING’) | list }}”

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  – name: Filter out instances to start

    set_fact:

      instances_to_start: “{{ clean_instances | selectattr(‘name’, ‘in’, instance_names_to_start) | selectattr(‘state’, ‘equalto‘, ‘STOPPED’) | list }}”

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  – name: Display instances to stop (you can remove this debug task later)

    debug:

      var: instances_to_stop

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  – name: Display instances to start (you can remove this debug task later)

    debug:

      var: instances_to_start

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  – name: Power off instances

    command:

      cmd: “oci compute instance action —action STOP –instance-id {{ item.id }}”

    loop: “{{ instances_to_stop }}”

    when: instances_to_stop | length > 0

    register: state

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#  – debug:

#      var: state

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  – name: Power on instances

    command:

      cmd: “oci compute instance action —action START –instance-id {{ item.id }}”

    loop: “{{ instances_to_start }}”

    when: instances_to_start | length > 0

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The output will look like

PLAY [Control OCI Instance Power State based on Instance Names] **********************************************************************************

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TASK [Gathering Facts] ***************************************************************************************************************************

ok: [localhost]

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TASK [Fetch all instance details in the compartment] *********************************************************************************************

changed: [localhost]

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TASK [Parse the OCI CLI output] ******************************************************************************************************************

ok: [localhost]

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TASK [Extract relevant information] **************************************************************************************************************

ok: [localhost] => (item={‘display-name’: ‘Instance1’, ‘id’: ‘ocid1.instance.oc1..exampleuniqueID1’, ‘lifecycle-state’: ‘STOPPED’})

ok: [localhost] => (item={‘display-name’: ‘Instance2’, ‘id’: ‘ocid1.instance.oc1..exampleuniqueID2’, ‘lifecycle-state’: ‘RUNNING’})

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TASK [Filter out instances to stop] **************************************************************************************************************

ok: [localhost]

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TASK [Filter out instances to start] *************************************************************************************************************

ok: [localhost]

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TASK [Display instances to stop (you can remove this debug task later)] **************************************************************************

ok: [localhost] => {

    “instances_to_stop“: [

        {

            “name”: “Instance2”,

            “id”: “ocid1.instance.oc1..exampleuniqueID2″,

            “state”: “RUNNING”

        }

    ]

}

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TASK [Display instances to start (you can remove this debug task later)] *************************************************************************

ok: [localhost] => {

    “instances_to_start“: [

        {

            “name”: “Instance1”,

            “id”: “ocid1.instance.oc1..exampleuniqueID1″,

            “state”: “STOPPED”

        }

    ]

}

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TASK [Power off instances] ***********************************************************************************************************************

changed: [localhost] => (item={‘name’: ‘Instance2’, ‘id’: ‘ocid1.instance.oc1..exampleuniqueID2’, ‘state’: ‘RUNNING’})

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TASK [Power on instances] ************************************************************************************************************************

changed: [localhost] => (item={‘name’: ‘Instance1’, ‘id’: ‘ocid1.instance.oc1..exampleuniqueID1’, ‘state’: ‘STOPPED’})

.

PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************************************************************

localhost                  : ok=9    changed=3    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

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