AppViewX Automates the Deployment of New Apache Virtual Machines in VMware via Ansible, and on-boards it to AppViewX Inventory with SSH Key authentication.
Yet, some of the largest enterprises in the world still maintain the same practices for provisioning and managing infrastructure in their private data center — operators closing developer-created tickets by pointing-and-clicking in software GUI’s to provision virtual machines.
Problem Statement:
Most of the organizations using AppViewX spend a lot of their time on manual creation and management of virtual instances with Apache web service configuration and manually onboard the newly provisioned VM in the AppViewX device inventory.
This blog will cover how AppViewX can be used to provision and manage VMware infrastructure and configure Apache web server and the same can be managed in AppViewX Inventory vi GUI.
Ansible is an IT automation engine, designed to accelerate DevOps processes. It is quickly becoming a go-to automation platform for organizations that are ready to embark on an automation journey.
AppViewX is an end-to-end low-code network automation and orchestration solution. It handles high-level network operations like real-time monitoring and reporting, compliance and governance, context-aware troubleshooting and auto-remediation, and self-servicing capabilities.
How does this work
AppViewX Automates the Deployment of New Apache Virtual Machines in VMware via Ansible, and on-boards it to AppViewX Inventory with SSH Key authentication.
Solution Proposed:
· AppViewX Visual Workflow which helps to trigger the Ansible playbook in order to achieve the use case of New Virtual Machine Deployment along with Apache Web server configured and the same Linux Server will be on-boarded automatically into the AppViewX Device Inventory.
· Now AppViewX Solves this problem with simple UI.
Version details:
· VCenter — 6.7
· Linux Centos version would be 7.9
· ESXi Server version is 6.5
· Ansible Version — 2.9
· AppViewX Version — 2020.3
Our Aim is to spin the required Virtual Machine in the VCenter, install the Apache, and onboard into the AppViewX Device Inventory. The customers who have Ansible as their configuration tool can leverage our playbook to achieve this use case.
We can achieve this use case in the below mentioned ways,
· Triggering the Ansible playbooks from the existing ‘AppViewX server with visual workflow.
· When we trigger the playbooks from the visual workflow, we need to mention the below parameter in the VW form field to run the visual workflow.
1. Hostname
2. Number of Virtual Machine
AppViewX Visual Workflow Automates all the manual steps mentioned below.
· VW will be responsible to create VM in the appropriate ESXi server and the resource pool from the OVA Template.
· VW helps to allocate the DHCP IP address, Subnet mask, Gateway, and reboot.
· It also handles the hostname and SSH Key-based authentication.
· This VW also handles the Apache web server installation and configuration.
· Configured VM will be managed in the AppViewX server Inventory under the Apache webserver category by using the API call.
Conclusion:
Achieved the use case of Automating VM deployment with Apache and onboard it to AppViewX Inventory, which is authenticated with SSH Keys by using Ansible Playbooks.
