Kargo (a.k.a Kubespray) is an initiative to deploy a Kubernetes cluster using Ansible. It will contrast with our previous Step by Step article by showing that we can deploy a cluster with a single command, a bit like the newly integrated SwarmKit feature announced in Docker 1.12 docker swarm init.
Over the last few weeks I built a new home lab based on the Supermicro A1SAi–2750F motherboard. Instead of manually configuring the required infrastructure services like DNS, NTP, OpenVPN and DHCP, I’m using Ansible to do all of it, in an easy and repeatable fashion. As a reminder Ansible is a YAML based configuration management tool, it’s agentless, use SSH as a communication medium. It’s simple and efficient. Read our intro article for more details. In this article I’ll details how to install a ISC DHCP server using Ansible. ISC DHCP is production-grade software that offers a complete solution for implementing DHCP servers, relay agents, and clients for small local networks to large enterprises.
Ansible seems to be the simplest tool to centrally manage systems of any kind, Docker containers, AWS, Google Compute, Rackspace, OpenStack instances, VMware VMs, etc… There isn’t any dependencies on the managed system apart from Python 2.6. Ansible isn’t using any database or daemon and won’t install anything on the managed system, all operations are executed using SSH.
In this article, I’ll details how to install it will introduce the main concepts and terminologies. You’ll then understand why companies like Evernote, Twitter, Nasa, Rackspace or Atlassian are all using this Configuration Management, deployment and orchestration tool Compared to other solutions like Chef, Puppet or SaltStack, Ansible is designed to be minimal in nature with low learning curve.
Last but not least, Ansible seems to be inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin communication device capable of instantaneous or superluminal communication.