Getting Started with NetApp and Ansible: Install Ansible

Updated 4/29/2020

Automation and Configuration Management are indispensable to an efficient DevOps driven environment. NetApp has supported Ansible modules for ONTAP and Element software.  So, let’s get right to it and see how all this works.

If you don’t want to install Ansible, but do have Docker, you can use the container image that is built weekly to have the most current Ansible and NetApp collections ‘schmots1/netapp-ansible ’.  Here is Docker’s getting started guide if you are unfamiliar. Docker Get Started

Part 1. Install Ansible

If you don’t have Ansible already installed, getting it is very easy.  There are multiple ways to get Ansible, but I will be focusing on the PIP method.  PIP is a python package manager.  I will show CentOS 7 and 8 for my examples but with minor changes this will work for any distribution.

For CentOS 7 the pip package is in the EPEL repository, so first you need to install that repo.

$ sudo yum install epel-release -y

Once that is installed it’s a simple matter to add PIP.

$ sudo yum install python-pip -y

For CentOS 8, pip comes with python, but it’s version 3 now.

$ sudo yum install python3 -y

Now that you have PIP installed, we can add Ansible with a single line. (For CentOS 8 ‘pip’ is ‘pip3’ i.e. sudo pip3 install ansible)

$ sudo pip install ansible

The last thing we need from PIP is some NetApp specific python modules.

$ sudo pip install netapp-lib solidfire-sdk-python requests

Finally, you need the NetApp collections and the collections directory to allow all users access

$ sudo ansible-galaxy collection install netapp.ontap netapp.elementsw -p /usr/share/ansible/collections
$ sudo chmod +rx /usr/share/ansible/collections

That’s it, Ansible is now installed and ready to use with ONTAP and Element Software.

Updates are very simple as well.

$ sudo pip install -U ansible
$ sudo ansible-galaxy collection install netapp.ontap netapp.elementsw -p /usr/share/ansible/collections -f

If you have any questions or comments join me on our Slack workspace in the #configurationmgmt channel. Also keep an eye on netapp.io for all new information on what we are doing around Ansible.

Part 1. Install Ansible
Part 2. Understanding Playbooks
Part 3. First Playbook Example
Part 4. Complete Workflow

David Blackwell

Technical Marketing Engineer at NetApp

David is a twenty year IT veteran who has been an admin for just about every aspect of a DataCenter at one time or another. When not working, or tinkering with new software at home, David spends most of his free time with his five year old son and his lovely wife.