Re: [Gluster-infra] Switching from salt to ansible ?

[Michael Scherer]

Le mardi 05 janvier 2016 à 14:59 +0100, Michael Scherer a écrit :

> 
> Another solution is to use ansible over salt
> ( https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/12836 ), which mean we get the
> benefit of both world. If we decide to switch, I would maybe start by
> that until we can get a more secured network setup (ie, reuse the
> existing salt setup, and migrate slowly).
> 

So it turn out that I am not able to properly take time off, and on
Sunday one week ago, I did enough commits on my ansible role[1] to
support the group based model I wanted to use. It also turn out that I
was able to make ansible run on salt for the transition today without
much fuzz[2].

So since I didn't see much opposition, I went ahead and did started the
migration from salt to ansible. 

I will give more details once I make sure I fixed freeipa deployment (so
we can use it for LDAP and access control for the git repo, as it is
planned ), and then we will see the way forward from there.

[1] https://github.com/OSAS/ansible-role-ansible_bastion/commits/master 
[2] https://github.com/OSAS/ansible-role-salt_transport

-- 
Michael Scherer
Sysadmin, Community Infrastructure and Platform, OSAS




signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
___
Gluster-infra mailing list
Gluster-infra@gluster.org
http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-infra

Re: [Gluster-infra] Switching from salt to ansible ?

[Michael Scherer]

Le lundi 04 janvier 2016 à 17:27 +0100, Michael Scherer a écrit :

> - salt in epel is still using a old version ( for dependencies reasons
> ). While this is working well enough, it make contributing quite
> difficult, and prevent using some new features that are needed. 

of course, the fun is that freebsd is shipping the new version, and it
break:
# salt -t 60 'freebsd0.cloud.gluster.org' test.ping
freebsd0.cloud.gluster.org:
'test' __virtual__ returned False
ERROR: Minions returned with non-zero exit code

SO yeah, keeping minion and server at the same level if a bit annoying
unless we ship our own packages. And while I could do that, I am not
sure I want to become a expert in all possible packages managers...

-- 
Michael Scherer
Sysadmin, Community Infrastructure and Platform, OSAS




signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
___
Gluster-infra mailing list
Gluster-infra@gluster.org
http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-infra

Re: [Gluster-infra] Switching from salt to ansible ?

[Michael Scherer]

Le mardi 05 janvier 2016 à 10:55 +0530, Kaushal M a écrit :
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 9:57 PM, Michael Scherer  wrote:
> >
> > - having a client/server model is something that caused trouble with
> > puppet when they decided to support only 1 version of ruby (around the
> > ruby 2.0 time frame). And given the transition of python2 and 3 is
> > happening right now in Fedora, I foresee this might be the same kind of
> > issue for salt.
> 
> I think this would be a problem with Ansible as well, as it depends on
> python2. I've faced some small hiccups getting ansible to manage Arch
> Linux which uses python3 by default.

Most distribution will be staying with python2 as a option to be
installed, so the burden is minimal, but yeah, same for ansible.

Fedora atomic is shipping python2 on purpose to be manageable by
ansible.

Now for salt, maybe they will do the same, but in the case of puppet,
there was a unwillingness of the ruby packager to offer 2 version, and a
strong dependencies on agent and the puppetmaster preventing any
mismatch.

> >
> > - Fedora is using ansible, and while we can't reuse their code that
> > much, we can at least take it and adapt.
> >
> > Now, there is a few downsides:
> >
> > - it mean rewriting most of the stuff we already have
> >
> > - it mean that we depend on sshd to be running. IE, if we screwed ssh
> > config (happened in the past), we can't just use salt to fix it.
> >
> > - it also mean that we will have a ssh key to connect as root on a
> > server, and i am not that confortable with the idea (provided that we
> > use the regular method of using ansible, ie push based)
> >
> > and maybe other I didn't think of.
> 
> I've sometime had Ansible modules which failed to run on the remote
> host because it lacked some python packages. This could be a problem
> for Ansible. I've not faced this with Salt yet, maybe because the
> remote hosts need to have salt installed which would pull in all
> dependencies.

Nope, same issue with salt. But that's easy to fix, just add the
required packages as needing to be installed before.

-- 
Michael Scherer
Sysadmin, Community Infrastructure and Platform, OSAS




signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
___
Gluster-infra mailing list
Gluster-infra@gluster.org
http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-infra

Re: [Gluster-infra] Switching from salt to ansible ?

[Kaushal M]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 2:52 PM, Niels de Vos  wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 04, 2016 at 05:27:10PM +0100, Michael Scherer wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> so over the holidays, I was pondering on moving to ansible from salt.
>>
>> So the reasons are numerous:
>>
>> - I am personally much more efficient with ansible than with salt
>> (despite using salt for 1 year). While the 2 tools do the same basic
>> stuff, there is always some difference (like user vs owner), and there
>> is a totally different philosophy when it come to multiple servers
>> orchestration (one example is how I do deploy freeipa on salt vs
>> ansible).
>
> Many of us are more familiar with Ansible than Salt. It'll be easier to
> get contributions from developers when Ansible is used.
>
>> - Since I use ansible for most others projects, I do already have a few
>> roles for most of the thing I want to deploy (freeipa, nagios, etc), and
>> adding features on them and then again on salt is not very efficient.
>>
>> - One of the initial reasons to choose salt was a tiny margin of people
>> who know it in the community, vs ansible. I suspect this is no longer
>> valid. For example, the vagrant image for developper is made using
>> ansible, and I know a few people in the dev community who use ansible. I
>> still think no one grok salt.
>>
>> - Another of the reason of using salt vs ansible is that salt was much
>> faster to apply configuration, especially if done on git commit. While
>> that's true, I managed to make it good enough on manageiq.org using
>> smart post-commit hook, and salt is getting also slower the more stuff
>> we add to configuration.
>>
>> - salt in epel is still using a old version ( for dependencies reasons
>> ). While this is working well enough, it make contributing quite
>> difficult, and prevent using some new features that are needed.
>>
>> - having a client/server model is something that caused trouble with
>> puppet when they decided to support only 1 version of ruby (around the
>> ruby 2.0 time frame). And given the transition of python2 and 3 is
>> happening right now in Fedora, I foresee this might be the same kind of
>> issue for salt.
>>
>> - Fedora is using ansible, and while we can't reuse their code that
>> much, we can at least take it and adapt.
>
> And can ask the Fedora sysadmins for help/ideas, or discuss the general
> approach of a role/task. If something in our Ansible doesn't work well
> enough, they might be able to share their thoughts. Fedora Infra is
> interested in Gluster and they would surely assist with some bits in
> return for our help ;-)
>
>> Now, there is a few downsides:
>>
>> - it mean rewriting most of the stuff we already have
>>
>> - it mean that we depend on sshd to be running. IE, if we screwed ssh
>> config (happened in the past), we can't just use salt to fix it.
>
> Having ssh running, or the salt-minion, does not make much of a
> difference to me.
>
>> - it also mean that we will have a ssh key to connect as root on a
>> server, and i am not that confortable with the idea (provided that we
>> use the regular method of using ansible, ie push based)
>
> Or (a dedicated ansible user and) use sudo? Might make auditing a little
> easier. I think its even possible to use sshd/Match on a username and
> only allow certain logins from selected sources (like a management
> server).
>
>> and maybe other I didn't think of.
>>
>> Any opinions ?
>
> I prefer the move to Ansible, it would allow me to contribute changes
> without learning Salt. Fixing/improving Ansible (in Python) is also
> something that I can do, but I'll stay away from patching Salt (in
> Ruby).

Salt is also a Python based tool. You were probably thinking about
Puppet or Chef. :)

>
> Niels
>
> ___
> Gluster-infra mailing list
> Gluster-infra@gluster.org
> http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-infra
___
Gluster-infra mailing list
Gluster-infra@gluster.org
http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-infra

Re: [Gluster-infra] Switching from salt to ansible ?

[Kaushal M]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 9:57 PM, Michael Scherer  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> so over the holidays, I was pondering on moving to ansible from salt.

I'd like this as well, as I'm more familiar with Ansible as well. If
switching to Ansible helps reduce the burden on you, I think we should
do the switch.

>
> So the reasons are numerous:
>
> - I am personally much more efficient with ansible than with salt
> (despite using salt for 1 year). While the 2 tools do the same basic
> stuff, there is always some difference (like user vs owner), and there
> is a totally different philosophy when it come to multiple servers
> orchestration (one example is how I do deploy freeipa on salt vs
> ansible).
>
> - Since I use ansible for most others projects, I do already have a few
> roles for most of the thing I want to deploy (freeipa, nagios, etc), and
> adding features on them and then again on salt is not very efficient.
>
> - One of the initial reasons to choose salt was a tiny margin of people
> who know it in the community, vs ansible. I suspect this is no longer
> valid. For example, the vagrant image for developper is made using
> ansible, and I know a few people in the dev community who use ansible. I
> still think no one grok salt.
>
> - Another of the reason of using salt vs ansible is that salt was much
> faster to apply configuration, especially if done on git commit. While
> that's true, I managed to make it good enough on manageiq.org using
> smart post-commit hook, and salt is getting also slower the more stuff
> we add to configuration.
>
> - salt in epel is still using a old version ( for dependencies reasons
> ). While this is working well enough, it make contributing quite
> difficult, and prevent using some new features that are needed.
>
> - having a client/server model is something that caused trouble with
> puppet when they decided to support only 1 version of ruby (around the
> ruby 2.0 time frame). And given the transition of python2 and 3 is
> happening right now in Fedora, I foresee this might be the same kind of
> issue for salt.

I think this would be a problem with Ansible as well, as it depends on
python2. I've faced some small hiccups getting ansible to manage Arch
Linux which uses python3 by default.

>
> - Fedora is using ansible, and while we can't reuse their code that
> much, we can at least take it and adapt.
>
> Now, there is a few downsides:
>
> - it mean rewriting most of the stuff we already have
>
> - it mean that we depend on sshd to be running. IE, if we screwed ssh
> config (happened in the past), we can't just use salt to fix it.
>
> - it also mean that we will have a ssh key to connect as root on a
> server, and i am not that confortable with the idea (provided that we
> use the regular method of using ansible, ie push based)
>
> and maybe other I didn't think of.

I've sometime had Ansible modules which failed to run on the remote
host because it lacked some python packages. This could be a problem
for Ansible. I've not faced this with Salt yet, maybe because the
remote hosts need to have salt installed which would pull in all
dependencies.

>
> Any opinions ?
> --
> Michael Scherer
> Sysadmin, Community Infrastructure and Platform, OSAS
>
>
>
> ___
> Gluster-infra mailing list
> Gluster-infra@gluster.org
> http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-infra
___
Gluster-infra mailing list
Gluster-infra@gluster.org
http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-infra