Ansible Configuration Management Database

About

This script takes the output of Ansible's setup module and converts it into a static HTML overview page containing system configuration information.

It supports multiple templates and extending information gathered by Ansible with custom data.

HTML example output.

Installation

Get the package for your distribution from the Releases page

For Debian / Ubuntu systems:

sudo dpkg -i ansible-cmdb*.deb

For Redhat / Centos systems:

sudo yum install ansible-cmdb*.rpm

For Other systems:

tar -vxzf ansible-cmdb*.tar.gz
cd ansible-cmdb*
sudo make install

Usage

Basic

First, generate Ansible output for your hosts:

mkdir out
ansible -m setup --tree out/ all

Next, call ansible-cmdb on the resulting out/ directory to generate the CMDB overview page:

ansible-cmdb out/ > overview.html

The default template is html_fancy, which required Jquery and a JQuery library. It can therefor not be opened in your browser using file:///, but must be served over http or https. You can do so reasonbly easy using Python's built-in webserver, which will serve files from the directory it is started in:

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ...
$ xdg-open http://localhost:8000/overview.html

Templates

ansible-cmdb offers multiple templates. You can choose your template with the -t or --template argument:

ansible-cmdb -t tpl_custom out/ > overview.html

The 'html_fancy' template is the default. It can be easily extended by copying it and modifying the cols definition at the top. It should be served over HTTP, as it uses CDN Jquery libs.

Ansible-cmdb currently provides the following templates out of the box:

• html_fancy: A fancy HTML page that used JQuery and DataTables to give you a searchable, sortable table overview of all hosts with detailed information just a click away.
• txt_table: A quick text table summary of the available hosts with some minimal information.

Inventory scanning

Ansible-cmdb can read your inventory file (hosts, by default) and extract useful information from it such as:

• All the groups a host belongs to.
• Host variables. These are optional key/value pairs for each host which can be used in playbooks. They are scanned by ansible-cmdb and get added to a hosts discovered facts under the 'hostvars' section.

Reading the hosts inventory file is done using the -i switch to ansible-cmdb. It takes a single parameter: your hosts file. For example:

$ ansible-cmdb -i ./hosts out/ > cmdb.html

The ''html_fancy'' template uses four extra fields:

• groups: A list of Ansible groups the host belongs too
• dtap: Whether a host is a development, test, acceptance or production system.
• comment: A comment for the host.
• ext_id: An external unique identifier for the host.

For example, lets say we have the following hosts file:

[cust.megacorp]
db1.dev.megacorp.com   dtap=dev  comment="Old database server"
db2.dev.megacorp.com   dtap=dev  comment="New database server"
test.megacorp.com      dtap=test 
acc.megacorp.com       dtap=acc  comment="24/7 support"
megacorp.com           dtap=prod comment="Hosting by Foo" ext_id="SRV_10029"

[os.redhat]
megacorp.com
acc.megacorp.com
test.megacorp.com
db2.dev.megacorp.com

[os.debian]
db1.dev.megacorp.com

The host acc.megacorp.com will have groups 'cust.megacorp' and 'os.redhat', will have a comment saying it has 24/7 support and will be marked as a acc server. Megacorp.com host will have an external ID of "SRV_10029", which will be required by for communicating with Foo company about hosting.

See http://docs.ansible.com/intro_inventory.html#host-variables for more information on host variables.

Extending

You can specify multiple directories that need to be scanned for output. This lets you add more custom information by creating a directory that looks like the output of Ansible's 'setup' module, but contains fake entries with your own information.

For example, if your normal ansible setup output contains:

$ ls out/
db1.dev.megacorp.com
db2.dev.megacorp.com
test.megacorp.com
$ cat out/test.megacorp.com
{
    "ansible_facts": {
        "ansible_all_ipv4_addresses": [
            "158.12.198.104"
        ], 
--snip--

You can create an additional directory with custom information:

$ mkdir out_cust
$ cat out_cust/test.megacorp.com
{
    "software": [
        "Apache2",
        "MySQL5.5"
    ]
}

Specify both directories when generating the output:

./ansible-cmdb out/ out_cust/ > overview.html

Your custom variables will be put in the root of the host information dictionary:

"test.megacorp.com": {
    "ansible_facts": {
        "ansible_all_ipv4_addresses": ["185.21.189.140"],
    },
    "changed": false,
    "groups": ["cust.flusso"],
    "software": [
        "Apache2",
        "MySQL5.5"
    ],
    "name": "ad6.flusso.nl"
}

Full usage

Usage: ansible-cmd [option] > output.html

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -t TEMPLATE, --template=TEMPLATE
                        Template to use
  -i INVENTORY, --inventory=INVENTORY
                        Inventory hosts file to read extra info from