Ansible playbook for creating an OpenShift cluster on VMware Cloud (VMC)

Ansible playbook for creating an OpenShift cluster on VMware Cloud (VMC)

Creating an OpenShift cluster on VMware Cloud (VMC) is a great way to take advantage of the power and flexibility of OpenShift while also leveraging the scalability and security of VMC. In this blog post, we'll walk through how to use Ansible to automate the process of creating an OpenShift cluster on VMC.

The first step is to create an Ansible playbook that will handle the creation of the OpenShift cluster. Here's an example of what that playbook might look like:

---
- name: Create OpenShift cluster on VMC
  hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  vars:
    vmc_username: "{{ lookup('env', 'VMC_USERNAME') }}"
    vmc_password: "{{ lookup('env', 'VMC_PASSWORD') }}"
    vmc_sddc_name: "{{ lookup('env', 'VMC_SDDC_NAME') }}"
    vmc_org_name: "{{ lookup('env', 'VMC_ORG_NAME') }}"
    cluster_name: "my-openshift-cluster"
    cluster_region: "us-west-2"
    cluster_size: "small"
  tasks:
  - name: Install python3 and python3-pip
    package:
      name: "{{ item }}"
      state: present
    loop:
      - python3
      - python3-pip
  - name: Install pyvmomi
    pip:
      name: pyvmomi
      executable: python3
  - name: Install vmc-tools
    pip:
      name: vmc-tools
      executable: python3
  - name: Create OpenShift cluster
    vmc_cluster:
      vmc_username: "{{ vmc_username }}"
      vmc_password: "{{ vmc_password }}"
      vmc_org_name: "{{ vmc_org_name }}"
      vmc_sddc_name: "{{ vmc_sddc_name }}"
      name: "{{ cluster_name }}"
      region: "{{ cluster_region }}"
      size: "{{ cluster_size }}"
      state: present
  

This playbook makes use of several key Ansible modules and variables to automate the process of creating an OpenShift cluster on VMC. The vmc_username, vmc_password, vmc_sddc_name, and vmc_org_name variables are used to authenticate with VMC, while the cluster_name, cluster_region, and cluster_size variables are used to specify the details of the OpenShift cluster that we want to create.

The playbook also makes use of the package and pip modules to install the necessary dependencies (python3, python3-pip, pyvmomi, and vmc-tools) and the vmc_cluster module to create the OpenShift cluster with the specified name, region, and size.

It is important to note that this playbook assumes that the following environment variables are set with the appropriate values: VMC_USERNAME, VMC_PASSWORD, VMC_SDDC_NAME, and VMC_ORG_NAME.

To run this playbook, simply execute the following command:

ansible-playbook