Testing Ansible Playbooks/roles with Test-kitchen and Serverspec

In this post, I will discuss the tools/plugins to test the playbooks/roles as part of infrastructure testing through TDD( Test Driven Development).

We used test-kitchen and serverspec to test the playbook

1- make sure on your work station you have installed git,docker,ruby,

install the rpm- ruby package manger and install bundler usig rpm.

create a file called Gemfile and enter the below content and run

vim Gemfile
source ‘https://rubygems.org'
gem ‘test-kitchen’, ‘~> 1.8.0’
gem ‘kitchen-docker’
gem ‘kitchen-ansible’
gem ‘net-ssh’
gem ‘serverspec’
gem ‘kitchen-verifier-serverspec’
[root-testmachine:]bundle install

we have installed the gems ‘test-kitchen’ , ‘kitchen-docker’,’serverspec’, ‘kitchen-ansible’ and ‘net-ssh’ with the above step.

create a file called .kitchen.yml file and add the below entries

---
driver:
  name: docker
#enble to true if you are not s root on your workstation  
use_sudo: false

platforms:
  - name: ubuntu-14.04
    driver:
       image: rndmh3ro/docker-ubuntu1404-ansible:latest
       platform: ubuntu


provisioner:
  name: ansible_playbook
  hosts: test-kitchen
  roles_path: roles
  ansible_verbose: false
  ansible_verbosity: 2
  require_ansible_repo: false
  require_ansible_omnibus: false
  require_chef_for_busser: false
  ansible_connection: ssh


verifier:
  name: serverspec
  use_sudo: yes
  sudo_path: true

suites:
  - name: default
    verifier:
        default_pattern: true
        bundler_path: '/usr/local/bin'
        rspec_path: '/usr/local/bin'
        env_vars:
              TARGET_HOST: 127.0.0.1
              SUDO: true

as we are using docker as the virtualization emulator in our scenario, we gave name: docker in the driver section.

Next steps is to specify the platforms , as i wish to run and test my playbook in a ubuntu server platform we have specifed as and found an docker image that has ansible installed along with it.

platforms:
  - name: ubuntu-14.04
    driver:
       image: rndmh3ro/docker-ubuntu1404-ansible:latest
       platform: ubuntu

Next step is to mention the provisioner whether it is ansible/puppet/chef and the desired paths for playbooks/roles to look for it.

provisioner:
  #nameof proviosner ansible-if notfound  
  name: ansible_playbook 
  #name of host it has to run,can localhost  
  hosts: test-kitchen  
  #path for ansible roles  
  roles_path: roles 
  ansible_verbose: false
  ansible_verbosity: 2
  require_ansible_repo: false
  #notinstall ansible(true -viceversa)  
  require_ansible_omnibus: false
  #don't install chef - should be false everytime
  require_chef_for_busser: false
  ansible_connection: ssh

Next step is to mention the verifier — tool/framework to perform the test.

we prefered to use serverspec, as it has mostly plain English kind of language we can also use cucumber,inspec and rspec and other frame works.

verifier:
  name: serverspec
  use_sudo: yes
  sudo_path: true

next step is to define the path for the test cases and suites.

name is very important ,by default test-kitchen looks for the default location of test/integration/<suitename>/serverspec/<suitename>_spec.rb file , unless you specify the pattern of the test case file.(I have used default patern in my example)

suites:
  - name: default
    verifier:
        default_pattern: true
        bundler_path: '/usr/local/bin'
        rspec_path: '/usr/local/bin'
        env_vars:
              TARGET_HOST: 127.0.0.1
              SUDO: true

My directory/project strcture is like

/opt/ansible/ansible-kitchen:

│ default.yml
│ .kitchen
│ .kitchen.yml
│ Gemfile
│ Gemfile.lock
├── roles
│ └── splunk
│ ├── defaults
│ ├── files
│ ├── handlers
│ ├── meta
│ ├── spec
│ ├── tasks
│ │ └── main.yml
│ ├── templates
│ ├── tests
│ └── vars
├── spec
│ ──spec_helper.rb
├── test
│ └── integration
│ └── default
│ │ ├── serverspec
│ │ ├── spec_helper.rb
│ │ └── test_spec.rb
│ ── default.yml
└── vendor

test-kitchen commands:

kitchen create — it just create the docker conatiner/vm to run

kitchen destroy- it will delete the conatiners/vm’s created by kitchen.

kitchen converge: will run the playbooks and roles as mentioned in provision

kitchen verify: will test the playbooks and roles as mentioned in the suites.

kitche test : will create,converge,verify and destroy the containers.