Lab 3.2: Deploying Templates with Tower¶

Task 1 - Deploy HTTPs Tower Template¶

In this task we will be running through an example Template and will come back in Task2 and explain the flow Tower took to get the end result. Perform the following steps to complete this task:

1. Open the Ansible Tower GUI in Chrome by navigating to https://10.1.1.12 and login using T1-admin-user/default credentials.

2. Click TEMPLATES in the top menu bar of tower. Notice that there are only two templates now visible as you are no longer logged in as the Tower admin but as the Tenant1 admin. In this Role you are able to view what is currently deployed within your Tenant and also POST a new declaration to AS3 for your Tenant.

   

3. Select the Rocket-Ship Icon next to the Template titled Tenant1_Deploy_Config.

4. The modal that comes up is the Survey we referred to earlier. This takes in the variables which will be passed to the Ansible Playbook. This example takes two parameters.

   • Tenant: This is limited by the RBAC policies that were deployed through Postman. You are not able to change this value which reduces the blast radius of changes made to your Tenant (Tenant1).
   • Template FIle: This is the source-of-truth JSON file that we will be deploying. For now set this to f5-https-offload-app.

   

5. Select the LAUNCH button to deploy this configuration.

6. Tower will bring you to a a page to view the Job running. Wait for the Status located in the top left to become Green and Successful. - At this point the JSON file was deployed to the BIG-IP.

   

7. Open a Chrome window/tab to the BIG-IP A GUI at https://10.1.1.10 and login with admin/admin credentials. Navigate to Local Traffic ‣ Virtual Servers. Make sure to select Tenant1 Partition in the top right hand corner to view your AS3 Tenant. You should see the Application that was created with AS3.

   

Task 2 - Review Templates/Playbooks¶

Now that we ran our first Tower Job, lets review what actually happened and how Tower was able to deploy a full configuration with so little input. Keep in mind that the JSON file referenced within the previous Template was considered to be Tenant1's source-of-truth. Major changes to the Tenant would be performed out of band from this current process and pushed to the GIT Repo. We will cover PATCH changes in upcoming Tasks and labs.

Review the following data objects to finish this Task

1. The template we ran called Tenant1_Deploy_Config calls an Ansible Playbook called tenant_template.yaml. The key points to notice are:
   • tenant_body: This is where Ansible is looking up the base AS3 application.
   • body: This object refers to a Jinja2 template. This allows ansible to place variables provided in the Tower Survey into the AS3 declaration. We will review the Jinja2 template in the next step.

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---
- name: Update Tenant
  hosts: bigip
  gather_facts: false
  connection: local

  vars:
    tenant_body: "{{ lookup('url', 'https://<<repo-location>>/{{ f5_template }}.json', split_lines=False) }}"
    uri_method: "POST"
  tasks:
    ##### AS3 POST #####
  - name: URI POST Tenant
    uri:
      url: "https://{{ inventory_hostname }}/mgmt/shared/appsvcs/declare"
      method: "{{ uri_method }}"
      user: "admin"
      password: "admin"
      validate_certs: no
      body: "{{ lookup('template', '../j2/tenant_base.j2') }}"
      body_format: json

1. Lets examine the Jinja2 template that is called by the playbooks below.

   • tenant: This is where the Tenant/Partition is inserted into the AS3 playbook. This prevents the user from editing someone elses Tenant.
   • tenant_body: The JSON Source-of-Truth is inserted here.
   • Together the two objects above create a complete AS3 Declaration for Tenant1.

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   { "class": "AS3", "action": "deploy", "persist": true, "declaration": { "class": "ADC", "schemaVersion": "3.2.0", "id": "testid", "label": "test-label", "remark": "test-remark", "{{tenant}}": {{tenant_body}} } }

2. This same logic could be followed for grouping multiple applications Together under 1 declartion. Testing has been performed to demonstrate AS3s ability to deploy hundreds of Applications through a single declaration.

Task 3 - Viewing the state of AS3 on the BIG-IP¶

The other Template available to our T1-admin-user is Tenant1_View_config. This is a simple Playbook which will perform a GET` against AS3 for the current users ”Tenant” and display it within the Job output.

1. Navigate to Templates in the GUI and select the Rocket-Ship Icon next to the Template titled Tenant1_Deploy_Config.

   

2. This Template does not have a survey associated with it. When the Job Completes you will be able to click directly on the JSON output to review the current AS3 Config.

   

   

Task 4 - Explore Additional Source-of-Truth Files¶

Using the procedures above explore Deploying the other example Source-of-Truth files that are available within the Tenant1_Deploy_Config template. The table below represents what each template contains.