Exercise 3: Event-Driven Ansible - Automation Decisions
Overview
What is Event-Driven Ansible?
Event-Driven Ansible allows you to rip out more pages of your hardcopy runbook. While Automation Controller (through Playbooks) may automate your response to particular events, Event-Driven Ansible (through Rulebooks) codifies the symptoms that you have to recognize from an event before being able to respond.
If you’re able to describe the conditions for action and specify the response to those conditions, your automation will become more resilient and allow your organization to respond with automation much quicker.
Unified User Experience
With Ansible Automation Platform 2.5, components of the platform are co-located under a new unified user experience. Now you will find the Automation Decisions (EDA) user interface in the same screen as Automation Execution (Controller).
Getting Started
Step 1: If you are not in the AAP tab, switch to the AAP tab.
Step 2: Log in using the credentials below.
EDA Controller Resources
Understanding EDA Resources
Just like Automation Controller has resources needed for job template execution, Event-Driven Ansible Controller defines resources needed for execution of rulebooks. There are three main resource types that have to be defined before creating a rulebook activation that will listen for incoming events.
Decision Environments
What are Decision Environments?
If you’re already familiar with Ansible Execution Environments, you will find Decision Environments very similar.
The main differences between the two are:
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Execution Environments (EEs) are built to contain tools to execute Playbooks
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Decision Environments (DEs) contain tools to execute Rulebooks
Both are container images that contain all the resources needed to execute Ansible playbooks and rulebooks, including the required collections.
Source Plugins in Decision Environments
Decision Environments are also built with collections that contain the source plugins for any source you want to receive events from. This means that if you’d like to receive events from Dynatrace, for example, you would have to install the collection dynatrace.event_driven_ansible in order to leverage the source plugin for Dynatrace.
Explore Decision Environments
Step 1: In the left-hand sidebar menu in AAP, navigate to menu:Automation Decisions[Infrastructure > Decision Environments].
Step 2: Take a look at the available Decision Environments.
You’ll notice that there are already Decision Environments added to AAP:
- Default Decision Environment
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This was added at installation time and is distributed by Red Hat as
de-supported. - NetOps Decision Environment
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This was created for this workshop and is custom-built. This Decision Environment contains the collection
ansible.edawhich ships supported plugins for several event sources.
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Decision Environments are essential for Event-Driven Ansible to function properly, as they contain all the necessary dependencies and source plugins. |
Credentials
Understanding EDA Credentials
Credentials can be leveraged for pull operations for both Decision Environments and Projects, used to connect to external event sources, and to secure inbound webhook endpoints via Event Streams.
Explore Credentials
Step 1: In the left-hand sidebar, navigate to menu:Automation Decisions[Infrastructure > Credentials].
Step 2: Review the available credentials.
If you have private repositories for either Decision Environments or Projects, you can create a credential from this section.
By default, you will see:
- Decision Environment Container Registry
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This credential is added at installation time.
- AAP
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This credential was pre-loaded into the AAP instance for this workshop. This credential will be used for Rulebook Activations in upcoming exercises.
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Credentials in EDA Controller provide secure access to external systems and repositories, ensuring your automation remains secure. |
Projects
What are Projects in EDA?
Projects are really just like they are in Automation Controller (under the Automation Execution heading). These projects represent source control repositories that contain your rulebooks.
Explore Projects
Step 1: In the left-hand sidebar, navigate to menu:Automation Decisions[Projects].
Step 2: Review the available projects that contain rulebooks.
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Projects in EDA Controller work the same way as in Automation Controller, linking to Git repositories that contain your automation content - in this case, rulebooks instead of playbooks. |
Summary
In this exercise, you’ve learned about the key components of Event-Driven Ansible:
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Decision Environments: Container images with tools to execute rulebooks
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Credentials: Secure access to external systems and repositories
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Projects: Source control repositories containing your rulebooks
These three resources work together to enable Event-Driven Ansible to listen for events and automatically respond based on the conditions you define in your rulebooks.