Automation Action Ansible

The Automation Action Ansible sensor supports the Instana Managing actions feature.

The sensor is automatically deployed and installed after you install the Instana agent.

With this sensor, the Instana agent can run Ansible actions that have been imported into the action catalog in Instana. The sensor uses the Ansible automation connector to connect to the Ansible Automation Controller on which it is to run jobs.

Enabling and configuring the sensor

The Automation Action Ansible sensor is disabled by default. To enable and configure the sensor, update the agent configuration file as covered in the following sections.

Prerequisites

The Automation Action Ansible sensor uses an Ansible automation connector image. To use the sensor, ensure that a container management engine (Docker or Podman) is available on the Instana agent.

To use the sensor in a self-hosted (on-premises) environment, ensure that the automation feature flag is enabled.

Enabling the sensor

To enable the sensor, update the agent configuration file as shown in the following example:

com.instana.plugin.action.ansible:
  enabled: true # by default is false
  url: <ansible_url> # Ansible Automation Controller url
  token: <token> # the token to connect to Ansible Automation Controller

Configuring the Ansible automation connector

By using the Ansible automation connector image, the sensor connects to the Ansible automation controller and runs jobs on it. The automation connector image is pulled from artifact-public.instana.io registry when the sensor is activated.

To configure the automation connector, update the agent configuration file as shown in the following example:

com.instana.plugin.action.ansible:
  enabled: true
  url: <ansible_url>
  token: <token>
  connector:
    container_mgmt_engine: docker|podman # the container management engine
    host_port: 9080 # the port on the host to bind the connector container to
    download_key: <download> # the Instana download key
    ready_timeout: 60 # optional, default timeout is 300 seconds

Modifying the number of concurrent Ansible actions

The Ansible sensor can run 10 concurrent Ansible actions, by default. To modify the maximum number of concurrent Ansible actions, add the maxConcurrentActions attribute to the Ansible sensor configuration in the agent configuration file as shown in the following example:

com.instana.plugin.action.ansible:
  enabled: true
  maxConcurrentActions: 5  # optional, default value is 10