ANTS Framework client
Project description
ANTS is a framework to manage and apply macOS and Linux host configurations using Ansible Pull.
The ANTS Framework is developed by the Client Services Team of the University of Basel IT Services and released under the GNU General Public License Version 3.
Ansible is a trademark of Red Hat, Inc..
Introduction
The ANTS Framework consists of the following components:
A wrapper for Ansible-Pull
An Ansible Dynamic Inventory Script (MS Active Directory Connector)
A modular collection of roles ready to be used
Strong logging integration
Requirements
This project assumes that you are familiar with Ansible , Git and the shell.
Getting started
Make sure Git is installed on your machine
Install the latest ants client using pip: pip install ants_client
Start an ANTS run by typing ants.
Wait for ANTS to finish, then open another shell. You will see the message of the day.
What happened?
Pip will install the ANTS client with a default configuration and put it in your path.
Running ANTS with the default configuration will use ansible-pull to clone the ANTS playbook from a github repository and execute an ansible run.
By default, this will add a message of the day to your macOS or Linux host. Logs of all the runs are stored at /var/log/ants.
Where to go from here?
Look at the configuration
Run ants -h to see all command line options or write your own configuration.
Besides the default configuration file in the ants_client package, ANTS will also look for a local configuration file at /etc/ants/ants.cfg.
Do not modify the default configuration file as it might be overwritten when updating ANTS.
Run other roles
Fork or duplicate our example playbook and change the client configuration to point to your repository. Update main.yml to assign different roles to your hosts.
You can use the default Ansible syntax. You can also use wildcards. Have a look at the Ansible documentation
Add ssh authentication to your repository
Ansible-pull cat clone a git repository using ssh. You can enable this by creating your own private playbook, adding ssh authentication and a read only ssh key to the repository. Configure ANTS to use that key.
By default, ANTS will look for a private key at /etc/ants/id_ants
You can generate a key with ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -N '' -C "ants client" -f /etc/ants/id_ants
By default, ANTS is configured to run with strict host key checking disabled and will add the host key for github.com to your known_hosts file. You should change this in production. To do so, add ssh_stricthostkeychecking = True to your ants.cfg
Add a dynamic inventory source
Ansible supports dynamic inventory scripts. (A json representation of hosts to group mappings.)
You can use scripts to tell ansible-pull which tasks to run on which host. You need an inventory source and a script that can read and return it in the correct format:
By default, ANTS will run a dummy script inventory_default that will just return your hostname belonging to a group named ants-common.
But we also provide inventory_ad which will connect to your Active Directory and return all groups your host is a member of. Just add your configuration to /etc/ants/ants.cfg. Note that read only rights for the Active Directory user are sufficient.
By using a dynamic inventory source, you can assign roles to a host using AD and let ANTS handle the configuration.
Group Layout in Active Directory
The groups in Active Directory must have the same names as the mappings and the variables you want to assign using Ansible. We recommend to keep the groups in a dedicated Organizational Unit to prevent naming collisions.
Nested groups with access restrictions are an easy way to offer rights delegation to other units in your organization.
What else do I need
Nothing. You just set up a configuration management that communicates savely over ssh using your AD and Github.
No additional infrastructure required.
Communication
Please use the GitHub issue tracker to file issues.
Please use a GitHub Pull-Request to suggest changes.
Comparison of plain Ansible and Ansible Tower to ANTS
What does ANTS do, that Ansible can not?
ANTS gives you a set of ready to be used roles for typical macOS and Linux host configurations.
ANTS let’s you utilize Active Directory to map computers to roles. With all it’s delegation and nesting features.
ANTS utilizes Ansible Pull and therefore does not require an active network connection to a central server. Roles will be locally applied even if the host is offline.
What does Ansible or Ansible Tower do that ANTS does not?
Tower has a nice Dashboard
Tower has a real time job output and push-button job runs
Tower can to job scheduling
Tower supports run-time job promoting
Tower supports workflows
Ansbile can use encrypted secrets using Vault
Ansible and Tower do offer Enterprise Support
Project details
Release history Release notifications | RSS feed
Download files
Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.
Source Distributions
Built Distribution
Hashes for ants_client-1.3.2-py2-none-any.whl
Algorithm | Hash digest | |
---|---|---|
SHA256 | 57bd9b6cfe0dfe126f4e7bde1e4eecc8c4777f856d88bcae517696fc34056e1a |
|
MD5 | db2ea22fd1d82ea53f565dcdf8072b62 |
|
BLAKE2b-256 | 3da58bcafb6872047a31af6002d7945807cca94d7d3ef19a00993c52b421a385 |