Note- This assumes you already have a out of the box ansible setup and a windows AD and windows test VM joined to the domain.

Install Prerequisite Packages on centos7 with ansible already installed

Use Yum to install the following packages.

Install GCC required for Kerberos

yum -y group install “Development Tools”

Install EPEL

yum -y install epel-release

Install Ansible

yum -y install ansible

Install Kerberos

yum -y install python-devel krb5-devel krb5-libs krb5-workstation

Install Python PIP

yum -y install python-pip

Install BIND utilities for nslookup

yum -y install bind-utils

Bring all packages up to the latest version

yum -y update

Check that Ansible and Python is Installed

Run the commands:

ansible – – version | head -l 1

python – – version

The versions of Ansible and Python here are 2.4.2 and 2.7.5. Ansible is developing extremely rapidly so these instructions will likely change in the near future.

Configure Kerberos

There are other options than Kerberos, but Kerberos is generally the best option, though not the simplest.

Install the Kerberos wrapper:
pip install pywinrm[Kerberos]

Kerberos packages were installed previously which will have created /etc/krb5.conf

Edit /etc/krb5.conf

[logging]
default = FILE:/var/log/krb5libs.log
kdc = FILE:/var/log/krb5kdc.log
admin_server = FILE:/var/log/kadmind.log
[libdefaults]
default_realm = HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM
dns_lookup_realm = false
dns_lookup_kdc = false
ticket_lifetime = 24h
renew_lifetime = 7d
forwardable = true
[realms]
HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM = {
kdc = HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM
admin_server = HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM
}
[domain_realm]
.home.nicktailor.com = HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM
home.nicktailor.com = HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM

Test Kerberos

Run the following commands to test Kerberos:

kinit administrator@HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM <–make sure you do this exact case sensitive or your authenication will fail. Also the user has to have domain admin privileges. 

You will be prompted for the administrator password klist
You should see a Kerberos KEYRING record.

[root@localhost win_playbooks]# klist
Ticket cache: FILE:/tmp/krb5cc_0Default principal: administrator@HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM
Valid starting       Expires              Service principal05/23/2018 14:20:50  05/24/2018 00:20:50  krbtgt/HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM@HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM renew until 05/30/2018 14:20:40

Configure Ansible

Ansible is complex and is sensitive to the environment. Troubleshooting an environment which has never initially worked is complex and confusing. We are going to configure Ansible with the least complex possible configuration. Once you have a working environment, you can make extensions and enhancements in small steps.

The core configuration of Ansible resides at /etc/ansible

We are only going to update two files for this exercise.

Update the Ansible Inventory file

Edit /etc/ansible/hosts and add:

[windows]

HOME.NICKTAILOR.COM

“[windows]” is a created group of servers called “windows”. In reality this should be named something more appropriate for a group which would have similar configurations, such as “Active Directory Servers”, or “Production Floor Windows 10 PCs”, etc.

Update the Ansible Group Variables for Windows

Ansible Group Variables are variable settings for a specific inventory group. In this case, we will create the group variables for the “windows” servers created in the /etc/ansible/hosts file.

Create /etc/ansible/group_vars/windows and add:

—

ansible_user: Administrator

ansible_password: Abcd1234

ansible_port: 5986

ansible_connection: winrm

ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation: ignore

This is a YAML configuration file, so make sure the first line is three dashes “‐‐‐”

Naturally change the Administrator password to the password for WinServer1.

For best practices, Ansible can encrypt this file into the Ansible Vault. This would prevent the password from being stored here in clear text. For this lab, we are attempting to keep the configuration as simple as possible. Naturally in production this would not be appropriate.

Configure Windows Servers to Manage

To configure the Windows Server for remote management by Ansible requires a bit of work. Luckily the Ansible team has created a PowerShell script for this. Download this script from [here] to each Windows Server to manage and run this script as Administrator.

Log into WinServer1 as Administrator, download ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 and run this PowerShell script without any parameters.

Once this command has been run on the WinServer1, return to the Ansible1 Controller host.

Test Connectivity to the Windows Server

If all has gone well, we should be able to perform an Ansible PING test command. This command will simply connect to the remote WinServer1 server and report success or failure.

Type:
ansible windows -m win_ping

This command runs the Ansible module “win_ping” on every server in the “windows” inventory group.

Type: ansible windows -m setup to retrieve a complete configuration of Ansible environmental settings.

Type: ansible windows -c ipconfig

If this command is successful, the next steps will be to build Ansible playbooks to manage Windows Servers.

Managing Windows Servers with Playbooks

 

Let’s create some playbooks and test Ansible for real on Windows systems.

Create a folder on Ansible1 for the playbooks, YAML files, modules, scripts, etc. For these exercises we created a folder under /root called win_playbooks.

Ansible has some expectations on the directory structure where playbooks reside. Create the library and scripts folders for use later in this exercise.

Commands:

cd /root

mkdir win_playbooks

mkdir win_playbooks/library

mkdir win_playbooks/scripts

Create the first playbook example “netstate.yml”
The contents are:

– name: test cmd from win_command module

  hosts: windows

  tasks:

    – name: run netstat and return Ethernet stats

      win_command: netstat -e

      register: netstat

    – debug: var=netstat

This playbook does only one task, to connect to the servers in the Ansible inventory group “windows” and run the command netstat.exe -a and return the results.

To run this playbook, run this command on Ansible1:

ansible-playbook netstat_e.yml