Configuration Management

[jon-nfc]

Config management is the process of storing, tracking of settings/data required for the configuration of infrastructure,

This Epic is an extension of the completed epic #33. This epic is to track the initial module features desired.

Details

The intent is to obtain configuration values from the ITSM library so that configuration is not duplicated by using an external config management system. i.e. ansible, puppet, terraform etc.

Even though most of the industry is moving towards a GitOps approach to config management, this module is intended to not use nor rely upon GitOps at all. why? GitOps adds additional steps just to enable version control (and roll on features), namely the creation of tickets and MR/PR in addition to any ITIL/ITSM tickets. It is for this reason that this module won't be GitOps based.

This module must provide version control for ALL configuration as well as the ability for approvals.

Config system must cater for and to the device lifecycle stages, being:

• OS provisioning

• SOE Setup

• Role deployment

• maintenance

Config deployment

We have settled on using Ansible as the config deployment system. This module will be setup to replicate the Ansible Inventory, Although, direct API requests will provide the same config values via a JSON dict.

Config workflow

The proposed config workflow is as follows:

1. User makes config change
2. Change ticket is created containing the config change
   1. if setup, an approval request is made to the required approver
   2. collaboration as required occurs on change ticket
   3. Proposed changes can be made to the config (if post approval, change will require re-approval)
   4. on approval, write the approved changes to the config
3. events system¹ notifies AWX for deployment
   1. AWX job that will make the changes (in check mode)
   2. AWX updates change ticket with job details
   3. Any host that AWX did detect as requiring a change:
      1. Change ticket created, with the host added as related
      2. parent ticket set to original change ticket².
      3. Job details added to hosts/clusters/etc change ticket
      4. Events system¹ notifies AWX for job to run against the host, that required the change
      5. Change ticket closed if job successful / Job failure to notify responsible person

Links

• AWX Integration #113
• Webhooks on events #379
• Sub Tickets #495

Features

• Configuration groups Config Groups #42

• Device Config ability to add device Config #98

• Version control for configuration

• Config group change approvals #56

• Templated config files #140
  Ability to create arbitrary text files from configuration. This offers the ability to have application config files from the config management system.

• Ansible Inventory Plugin

  • Inventory Plugin ansible_collection_centurion#2
  • add config to inventory ansible_collection_centurion#3
  • Add device config to inventory Plugin ansible_collection_centurion#4
  • Clusters as an inventory group ansible_collection_centurion#27

• Location Based Configuration³

Requirements

• API Provides JSON config via object endpoint
• ALL config version controlled
• A devices setting that conflicts with a group setting takes precedence (when fetching from API).
• A clusters setting that conflicts with a group setting takes precedence (when fetching from API).

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Footnotes

1. depends upon Webhooks on events #379 ↩ ↩²

2. depends upon Sub Tickets #495 ↩

3. depends upon Location Management #62 ↩