We are excited to introduce the all-new IBM Cloud Collection for Ansible, the first standard Ansible module for IBM Cloud resources.
Ansible is an open source configuration management and provisioning tool that was originally developed by Michael DeHaan and acquired by Red Hat in 2015. It is designed to automate complex applications and provision resources in the cloud.
With the new IBM Cloud Collection for Ansible, you can manage IBM Cloud resources directly with Ansible. This collection comes alongside the release of the IBM Cloud Provider for Terraform for 1.2.
Terraform and Ansible: Perfect together!
The standard approach for provisioning IBM Cloud resources is with Terraform through IBM Cloud Schematics, our free-to-use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solution. However, our customers are looking for the best practice approach to do config and app management on Terraform-created resources, and this is where Ansible shines.
While Terraform is best for provisioning infrastructure like VMs, Ansible excels at managing configuration, such as deploying an app into a VM. Integrating Terraform and Ansible into a toolchain is possible, albeit a bit manual. See “Sample Ansible playbook templates for Schematics actions” for details.
Up until now, there hasn’t been a standard Ansible module for IBM Cloud resources. To get started with the Ansible module today, check out the IBM Cloud Collection for Ansible on GitHub.
Get started with these two examples available today:
Deeper and deeper integration
This release marks an important step toward our commitment to integrate IBM Cloud Schematics and Red Hat Ansible Tower. Over the coming months, we are adding first-class support for Ansible playbooks in IBM Cloud Schematics, our Infrastructure as Code solution. In addition, stay tuned as we work to get the IBM Cloud Collection for Ansible added to the Ansible docs and Ansible Galaxy repository.
To learn more about strategies to automate your infrastructure, check out this video where I break down Infrastructure as Code: