# cloud-i-blog **Repository Path**: mirrors_ibm/cloud-i-blog ## Basic Information - **Project Name**: cloud-i-blog - **Description**: You could find IBM i cloud related information here. - **Primary Language**: Unknown - **License**: GPL-3.0 - **Default Branch**: master - **Homepage**: None - **GVP Project**: No ## Statistics - **Stars**: 0 - **Forks**: 0 - **Created**: 2020-11-23 - **Last Updated**: 2025-08-23 ## Categories & Tags **Categories**: Uncategorized **Tags**: None ## README # Automate your IBM i tasks with Ansible Ansible is a radically simple IT automation system. It handles configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, ad-hoc task execution, network automation, and multi-node orchestration. IBM i is an operating system that has thousands of core workloads running for different industries worldwide. More and more IBM i customers plan or have already started the journey of automating tasks and moving workloads into cloud environment. Traditional IBM i MSPs and ISVs are also looking for better solutions to improve the efficiency of system and application management. Ansible for IBM i can fit most of the tasks and cloud automation requirements for IBM i customers. There are several cases that IBM i customers or ISVs can take advantage of Ansible: 1. Automate traditional IBM i administration tasks, such as PTF management, system and application configuration, application deployment and installation, etc. These tasks are very common and are repeatedly executed in users’ environment. Thus, automate such tasks and processes can highly improve the system management efficiency. 2. Improve application development process and efficiency to shorten software delivery cycle. Continuous integration and continuous delivery are mentioned more and more by IBM i customers, who highly need tools to bring RPG written PGMs and object based applications into CI/CD world. 3. Manage multiple IBM i systems with interactive command lines. A single place to manage all the Linux (or other platforms) and IBM i partitions together becomes more and more important for MSPs and cloud users. There are many cases that IT environments and solutions are built upon many different systems so that the central management of these systems is very important. Ansible supports different platforms and the workflow could be managed all by playbook written in YAML. With playbook, complex IT environment can be managed from a single place. 4. Automate IBM i tasks with reusable playbooks. There are several cases that existing playbooks can be reused for IBM i customers. For example, for the tasks dealing with open source software in PASE, playbooks written for AIX platform may be reused with little modifications in some situations. 5. Ansible is already being operated by a certain group. And the operator with no IBM i skills wants to do basic management works of IBM i via Ansible. Ansible developers also can use IBM i modules to complete their playbook writing even if they may not have enough IBM i skills. # Introduce IBM i modules of Ansible The support of Ansible for IBM i focuses on the module functions. In this case, the Ansible engine needs to be installed on Linux servers and IBM i systems are managed as endpoints. Some of the Ansible core modules can work with IBM i PASE environment very well already. For example, copy and fetch modules of Ansible can be used to copy and fetch stream files to and from IBM i systems. Ansible module ‘command’ can also be used to execute PASE commands. However, for most of IBM i customers , the native IBM i environment, which is object based and managed by CL commands, running COBOL and RPG programs, is much more important. Previously, there was no module written for IBM i native environment. IBM started to provide IBM i modules from 2020, 1H. These modules can be found from GitHub https://github.ibm.com/IBMi-Cloud/ansible-for-i/ . Although now these Ansible modules are still in BETA version, you can start to try them out for your early testing or proof of concept. The GA version of IBM i modules will come out in the coming months. Moreover, this repository supports Ansible Tower so that the modules, plug-ins and playbooks can be directly loaded to Ansible Tower through the GUI. There will be an example in later sections of this article. The following table lists the current IBM i modules in the GitHub repository. More modules will be added throughout this year.
ibmi_at Schedule a batch job on a remote IBMi node.
ibmi_cl_command Executes a CL command.
ibmi_copy Copy a save file from local to a remote IBMi node.
ibmi_display_subsystem Display all currently active subsystems or currently active jobs in a subsystem.
ibmi_end_subsystem End a subsystem.
ibmi_fetch
 Fetch objects or a library from a remote IBMi node and store on local.
ibmi_install_product_from_savf
 Install the the licensed program(product) from a save file.
ibmi_lib_restore
 Restore one library on a remote IBMi node.
ibmi_lib_save
 Save one libary on a remote IBMi node.
ibmi_object_authority
 Grant, Revoke and Display the Object Authority.
ibmi_object_restore
 Restore one or more objects on a remote IBMi node.
ibmi_object_save
 Save one or more objects on a remote IBMi node.
ibmi_reboot
 Reboot IBMi machine.
ibmi_save_product_to_savf
 Save the the licensed program(product) to a save file.
ibmi_script
 Execute a local cl/sql script file on a remote ibm i node.
ibmi_script_execute
 Execute a cl/sql script file on a remote ibm i node.
ibmi_sql_execute
 Executes a SQL non-DQL(Data Query Language) statement.
ibmi_sql_query
 Executes a SQL DQL(Data Query Language) statement.
ibmi_start_subsystem
 Start a subsystem.
ibmi_sync
 Synchronize a save file from current ibm i node A to another ibm i node B.
ibmi_synchronize
 Synchronize a save file from ibm i node A to another ibm i node B.
ibmi_uninstall_product
 Delete the objects that make up the licensed program(product).
ibmi_user_and_group
 Create, Change and Display a user(or group) profile.
ibmi_device_vary
 Vary on or off target device on a remote IBMi node
ibmi_host_server_service
 Manage host server on a remote IBMi node
ibmi_tcp_server_service
 Manage tcp server on a remote IBMi node
ibmi_iasp
 Control IASP on target IBMi node
ibmi_message
 Search or reply message on a remote IBMi node
ibmi_fix
 Load from save file, apply, remove or query PTF(s).
ibmi_fix_imgclg
 Install fixes from virtual image.
ibmi_job
 Returns job information per user request.
ibmi_object_find
 Find specific IBM i object(s).
ibmi_submit_job
 Submit an IBM i job.
ibmi_tcp_interface
 Manage IBM i tcp interface. You can add, remove, start, end or query a tcp interface.
As mentioned previously in this article, some of the Ansible core modules can support IBM i. These modules are not developed specifically for IBM i and such modules can be divided into two categories. One category of modules controls the working flow of the Ansible playbook running, and they can be used for all the IBM i tasks. For example, the wait_for_connection module controls the playbook to wait for the endpoint connection being set up. The other category can run the tasks under IBM i PASE. For example, the command module can run tasks with PASE commands. The following table lists the core modules that can be used for IBM i tasks. Please note that, these modules only passed sanity tests from IBM i development team. There is future plan to do full testing for these modules in the coming months.
script
 set_up
 copy
 fetch
 command
file
 find
 stat
 shell
 raw
pip
 yum
 pause
 ping
 wait_for_connection
authorized_key
 assemble
 blockinfile
 lineinfile
 git

More about Ansible for IBM i GitHub repository. Currently, all the Ansible for IBM i modules, plugins and samples can be found via the link https://github.ibm.com/IBMi-Cloud/ansible-for-i/. You may want to start with the README for detail information including an installation guide. # Examples With the supported IBM i modules and Ansible core modules, common IBM i tasks can all be done by Ansible. Here give some examples of how to use Ansible modules for IBM i. 1. Prepare your environment. Before you can successfully run your first Ansible task, you need to make sure that your environment is ready. This means that your Ansible engine system and IBM i systems to be managed should both meet the certain environment requirements. You need to follow the README of the Ansible for IBM i GitHub repository for dependency checking and installation guide. After your environment is ready, the first thing to do is to configure IBM i inventory. For Ansible engine, inventory information could be configured into configuration file. For more information about Ansible inventory, please check out this link: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/intro_inventory.html. Here is a sample file content of the IBM i inventory: ``` [ibmi] 9.5.xxx.yyy ansible_ssh_user=youribmiuser ansible_ssh_pass=yourpassword [ibmi:vars] ansible_python_interpreter="/QOpensys/pkgs/bin/python2" ansible_ssh_common_args='-o StrictHostKeyChecking=no' ``` In the above section of configuration file, a group named ‘ibmi’ has been created and there is only one system under that group. Also, the variables against group ibmi have been defined in the file. One important variable is ansible_python_interpreter which tells Ansible where to find Python on the endpoint IBM i system in group ibmi. You If you use Ansible Tower, you will have to do all the inventory configurations via the GUI. 2. Run Ansible command interactively using ibmi_cl_command module. In this example, we will run a simple IBM i module named ibmi_cl_command interactively in the command terminal. The module will execute a CL command which creates a library of C1 on the system under inventory ibmi. As you can see from below command, option -i and -M are explicitly used to point out the inventory path and the IBM i module directory. You don’t need to use these two options if you have put the inventory and IBM i modules into Ansible default locations. ``` ansible ibmi -i /yourpath/hosts_ibmi.ini -M /yourmodulepath/ibmi/ -m ibmi_cl_command -a "cmd='crtlib lib(C1)'" Output: DB2MB1PA.RCH.STGLABS.IBM.COM | SUCCESS => { "changed": false, "cmd": "crtlib lib(C2)", "delta": "0:00:00.386441", "end": "2019-12-11 11:55:42.627733", "joblog": false, "rc": 0, "rc_msg": "Success", "start": "2019-12-11 11:55:42.241292", "stderr": "", "stderr_lines": [], "stdout": "CPC2102: Library C1 created.\n", "stdout_lines": [ "CPC2102: Library C1 created." ] } ``` If you want to see the detail parameters that are supported by a particular module, you could use ansible-doc command. In this example, you could issue below command to get all the parameters supported by ibmi_cl_command module: ``` ansible-doc -s -M /yourmodulepath/ibmi/ ibmi_cl_command - name: Executes a CL command on a remote IBM i node ibmi_cl_command: asp_group: # Specifies the name of the auxiliary storage pool (ASP) group to set for the current thread. The ASP group name is the name of the primary ASP device within the ASP group. cmd: # (required) The IBM i CL command to run. joblog: # If set to 'true', append JOBLOG to stderr/stderr_lines. ``` More examples can be found in GitHub repository: https://github.com/IBM/ansible-for-i/blob/master/examples/ibmi/samples.txt 3. Run a simple Ansible playbook. The Ansible playbook is used to run a list of tasks executed by modules. IBM i modules can be used together with other Ansible modules to complete complex tasks. Here is a simple example to demonstrate how to write playbook for IBM i systems. ``` --- - hosts: ibmi gather_facts: no tasks: - name: run the CL command to create a library ibmi_cl_command: cmd: crtlib lib(ansiblei) ``` Once you have your playbook written, you can use ansible-playbook command to run the playbook. Similar to ‘ansible’ command, you could specify the path to IBM i modules and inventory if you don’t want to use the default locations. ``` ansible-playbook -i /yourpath/hosts_ibmi.ini -M /yourmodulepath/ ibmi-cl-command-sample.yml ``` For more information about Ansible playbook, please refer to the link here: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks.html In the Ansible for IBM i GitHub repository, there are several playbook samples provided in the link here: https://github.com/IBM/ansible-for-i/tree/master/examples/ibmi/playbooks In the repository, there are IBM i module test cases in the format of playbooks as well. You could refer to them as more examples as well. 4. Run IBM i modules and playbooks with Ansible Tower. In the Ansible for IBM i repository, there is a sample playbook ibmi_try_tower_structure.yml in the root directory that you could use in your Ansible Tower template. The repository structure supports creating Ansible Tower project. Here are some key steps showing you where to config the GitHub repository to load the modules and playbooks. The assumption here is that the inventory and credential are all configured already. When creating a new project, you could specify the SCM TYPE as Git and fill the Ansible for IBM i GitHub repository link in SCM URL field. ‘master’ branch is used in this example. ![Create IBM i Sample Project in Ansible Tower](https://github.com/IBM/cloud-i-blog/blob/master/resources/pic/misc/ansible-automation-tower-1.png) After the project has been created, you need to define Template to run particular tasks. In the Template, you need to select the playbook from drop down menu of PLAYBOOK option. The list of playbook files are automatically loaded from GitHub repository. ![Create IBM i Sample Template in Ansible Tower](https://github.com/IBM/cloud-i-blog/blob/master/resources/pic/misc/ansible-automation-tower-2.png) You could launch the tasks when everything is configured. ![Run IBM i Sample Tasks in Ansible Tower](https://github.com/IBM/cloud-i-blog/blob/master/resources/pic/misc/ansible-automation-tower-3.png) To summarize, with IBM i modules, Ansible is perfect for your IBM i automation work for both on-prem and cloud environment. Especially in today's hybrid cloud environment with different types of systems and devices, orchestration of tasks together to form the workflow can help improving the efficiency, shortening the time to market, avoiding errors, achieving consistency, etc. Everyone should consider to automate your work in some degree, and Ansible should be one of your great choices.