Announcing Ansible modules for Q1 2023 release
Mon, 29 Apr 2024 19:23:05 -0000
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At the beginning of the year, I blogged about all the new Ansible integration features that were released in 2022 across the Dell infrastructure portfolio. As we add new functionality and make REST API enhancements to the different storage and server products of the portfolio, we add support for select features to the corresponding Ansible modules a few months down the line. For the storage portfolio, this happens every month, and for OpenManage modules for PowerEdge server line, the Ansible updates happen every month. So here I am here again with the Q1 release of the various Ansible plug-ins for the portfolio. In this set of releases, PowerStore tops the list with the greatest number of enhancements. Let’s look at each product to cover the main highlights of the release. If you really want to grok the workings of the Ansible module, the Python libraries for the storage and server platforms are also available. You can easily find them with a simple keyword search like this search on GitHub.
PowerStore
Version: 1.9
What’s new:
The main highlight for this release is around vVols and storage container support.
- Support for vVols
- Info module: List all vVol IDs and names if no specific vVol name or ID is specified
- Info module: List vVol details, including mapped hosts and host groups, for a specific vVol specified using ID or name
- Host and Host_group modules: List vVol details for a host or host group if applicable
- Support for vCenter
- List vCenter and associated details in Info module
- Add or delete a vCenter
- Modify vCenter settings
- Modify storage container
- Rename the storage container
- Enable/disable storage container capacity quota
- Specify container quota size or high-water mark values
- Change storage protocols—iSCSI, FC, or NVMe-oF
- Volume module: Support for application type in the Volume module. Here are the choices for quick reference:
- Filesystem module: Added support for configuring the following file system attributes while creating or modifying a file system. Note that you must be on PowerStore 3.0 or later to access these attributes:
- config_type:
- General—General-purpose use-case file system
- VMware-—VMware datastore-purpose use-case file system
- is_async_MTime_enabled:
- true—Asynchronous MTIME is enabled on the file system
- false—Asynchronous MTIME is disabled on the file system
- file_events_publishing_mode
- File retention attributes
- host_io_size—Applicable for VMware config file systems
- config_type:
GitHub release history: https://github.com/dell/ansible-powerstore/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst
PowerScale
Version: 1.9
What’s new:
- User module: Support for changing user password
- User module: Support for creating a user and group with both name and ID (uid or gid)
- SMB module: support for finding and closing SMB open files
- Synciqpolicy module: Improved error handling for scenarios where no SyncIQ policy is returned
GitHub release history: https://github.com/dell/ansible- powerscale/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst
Unity
Version: 1.6
What’s new:
- Ability to add a host from the Host List to NFS Export in the same way as in Unisphere UI or uemcli
- Filesystem module: Support for synchronous replication for filesystem module
- Volume module: Support for enabling and disabling advanced deduplication
GitHub release history: https://github.com/dell/ansible-unity/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst
OpenManage
Did you know that under the OpenManage Ansible plug-in set we have two entirely different types of Ansible modules? Going by the name, you would expect Ansible modules to manage configurations with OpenManage Enterprise artifacts like templates, baselines, compliance reporting, and so on. But the same OpenManage plug-in also includes Ansible modules to directly manage the iDRAC endpoints of your server fleet so that users can manage the server inventory directly with more granularity within Ansible. I hope most readers already know about this. Okay, so here is what’s new in this comprehensive plug-in (see this previous blog post for key integration highlights of v7.1 of the Ansible plug-in for OpenManage). Here is the GitHub page where you can view the complete release history for OpenManage.
Version: 7.2
What’s new:
- New module dellemc.openmanage.ome_profile_info: To retrieve profiles with attribute details
- New module dellemc.openmanage.ome_template_network_vlan_info: To retrieve network configuration of template
- idrac_redfish_storage_controller module: Enhanced to configure controller attributes and online capacity expansion
- ome_domian_user_groups module: Added ability to import the LDAP directory groups
- ome_inventory module: Now supports inventory retrieval of system and plug-in groups of OpenManage Enterprise
- ome_profile_info module: Added ability to retrieve profiles with attributes on OpenManage Enterprise or OpenManage Enterprise Modular
- ome_template_network_vlan_info: Added ability to retrieve the network configuration of a template on OpenManage Enterprise or OpenManage Enterprise Modular
Version: 7.3
What’s new:
- dellemc.openmanage.idrac_export_server_config_profile: Role to export iDRAC Server Configuration Profile (SCP)
- idrac_server_config_profile: Enhanced to support proxy settings, import buffer, include in export, and ignore certificate warning
GitHub release history: https://github.com/dell/dellemc-openmanage-ansible-modules/releases
OK, that’s not all for Dell-Ansible integrations for Q1. Stay tuned for some major developments coming soon.