community.general/docs/docsite/rst/scenario_guides/guide_gce.rst

Google Cloud Platform Guide
===========================

.. gce_intro:

Introduction
--------------------------

Ansible + Google have been working together on a set of auto-generated
Ansible modules designed to consistently and comprehensively cover the entirety
of the Google Cloud Platform.

Ansible contains modules for managing Google Cloud Platform resources,
including creating instances, controlling network access, working with
persistent disks, managing load balancers, and a lot more.

These new modules can be found under a new consistent name scheme "gcp_*"
(Note: gcp_target_proxy and gcp_url_map are legacy modules, despite the "gcp_*"
name. Please use gcp_compute_target_proxy and gcp_compute_url_map instead).

Additionally, the gcp_compute inventory plugin can discover all GCE instances
and make them automatically available in your Ansible inventory.

You may see a collection of other GCP modules that do not conform to this
naming convention. These are the original modules primarily developed by the
Ansible community. You will find some overlapping functionality such as with
the "gce" module and the new "gcp_compute_instance" module. Either can be
used, but you may experience issues trying to use them together.

While the community GCP modules are not going away, Google is investing effort
into the new "gcp_*" modules. Google is committed to ensuring the Ansible
community has a great experience with GCP and therefore recommends adopting 
these new modules if possible.


Requisites
---------------
The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) modules require both the ``requests`` and the
``google-auth`` libraries to be installed.

.. code-block:: bash

    $ pip install requests google-auth

Alternatively for RHEL / CentOS, the ``python-requests`` package is also 
available to satisfy ``requests`` libraries.

.. code-block:: bash

    $ yum install python-requests

Credentials
-----------
It's easy to create a GCP account with credentials for Ansible. You have multiple options to
get your credentials - here are two of the most common options:

* Service Accounts (Recommended): Use JSON service accounts with specific permissions.
* Machine Accounts: Use the permissions associated with the GCP Instance you're using Ansible on.

For the following examples, we'll be using service account credentials.

To work with the GCP modules, you'll first need to get some credentials in the
JSON format:

1. `Create a Service Account <https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2ServiceAccount#creatinganaccount>`_
2. `Download JSON credentials <https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/6158849?hl=en&ref_topic=6262490#serviceaccounts>`_

Once you have your credentials, there are two different ways to provide them to Ansible:

* by specifying them directly as module parameters
* by setting environment variables

Providing Credentials as Module Parameters
``````````````````````````````````````````

For the GCE modules you can specify the credentials as arguments:

* ``auth_kind``: type of authentication being used (choices: machineaccount, serviceaccount, application)
* ``service_account_email``: email associated with the project
* ``service_account_file``: path to the JSON credentials file
* ``project``: id of the project
* ``scopes``: The specific scopes that you want the actions to use.

For example, to create a new IP address using the `gcp_compute_address` module,
you can use the following configuration:

.. code-block:: yaml

   - name: Create IP address
     hosts: localhost
     gather_facts: no

     vars:
       service_account_file: /home/my_account.json
       project: my-project
       auth_kind: serviceaccount
       scopes:
         - www.googleapis.com/auth/compute

     tasks:

      - name: Allocate an IP Address
        gcp_compute_address:
            state: present
            name: 'test-address1'
            region: 'us-west1'
            project: "{{ project }}"
            auth_kind: "{{ auth_kind }}"
            service_account_file: "{{ service_account_file }}"
            scopes: "{{ scopes }}"

Providing Credentials as Environment Variables
``````````````````````````````````````````````

Set the following environment variables before running Ansible in order to configure your credentials:

.. code-block:: bash

    GCP_AUTH_KIND
    GCP_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL
    GCP_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE
    GCP_SCOPES

GCE Dynamic Inventory
---------------------

The best way to interact with your hosts is to use the gcp_compute inventory plugin, which dynamically queries GCE and tells Ansible what nodes can be managed.

To be able to use this GCE dynamic inventory plugin, you need to enable it first by specifying the following in the ``ansible.cfg`` file:

.. code-block:: ini

  [inventory]
  enable_plugins = gcp_compute

Then, create a file that ends in ``.gcp.yml`` in your root directory.

The gcp_compute inventory script takes in the same authentication information as any module.

Here's an example of a valid inventory file:

.. code-block:: yaml

    plugin: gcp_compute
    projects:
      - graphite-playground
    auth_kind: serviceaccount
    service_account_file: /home/alexstephen/my_account.json


Executing ``ansible-inventory --list -i <filename>.gcp.yml`` will create a list of GCP instances that are ready to be configured using Ansible.

Create an instance
``````````````````

The full range of GCP modules provide the ability to create a wide variety of
GCP resources with the full support of the entire GCP API.

The following playbook creates a GCE Instance. This instance relies on a GCP
network and a Disk. By creating the Disk and Network separately, we can give as
much detail as necessary about how we want the disk and network formatted. By
registering a Disk/Network to a variable, we can simply insert the variable
into the instance task. The gcp_compute_instance module will figure out the
rest.

.. code-block:: yaml

   - name: Create an instance
     hosts: localhost
     gather_facts: no
     vars:
         project: my-project
         auth_kind: serviceaccount
         service_account_file: /home/my_account.json
         zone: "us-central1-a"
         region: "us-central1"

     tasks:
      - name: create a disk
        gcp_compute_disk:
            name: 'disk-instance'
            size_gb: 50
            source_image: 'projects/ubuntu-os-cloud/global/images/family/ubuntu-1604-lts'
            zone: "{{ zone }}"
            project: "{{ gcp_project }}"
            auth_kind: "{{ gcp_cred_kind }}"
            service_account_file: "{{ gcp_cred_file }}"
            scopes:
              - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute
            state: present
        register: disk
      - name: create a network
        gcp_compute_network:
            name: 'network-instance'
            project: "{{ gcp_project }}"
            auth_kind: "{{ gcp_cred_kind }}"
            service_account_file: "{{ gcp_cred_file }}"
            scopes:
              - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute
            state: present
        register: network
      - name: create a address
        gcp_compute_address:
            name: 'address-instance'
            region: "{{ region }}"
            project: "{{ gcp_project }}"
            auth_kind: "{{ gcp_cred_kind }}"
            service_account_file: "{{ gcp_cred_file }}"
            scopes:
              - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute
            state: present
        register: address
      - name: create a instance
        gcp_compute_instance:
            state: present
            name: test-vm
            machine_type: n1-standard-1
            disks:
              - auto_delete: true
                boot: true
                source: "{{ disk }}"
            network_interfaces:
                - network: "{{ network }}"
                  access_configs:
                    - name: 'External NAT'
                      nat_ip: "{{ address }}"
                      type: 'ONE_TO_ONE_NAT'
            zone: "{{ zone }}"
            project: "{{ gcp_project }}"
            auth_kind: "{{ gcp_cred_kind }}"
            service_account_file: "{{ gcp_cred_file }}"
            scopes:
              - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute
        register: instance

       - name: Wait for SSH to come up
         wait_for: host={{ instance.address }} port=22 delay=10 timeout=60

       - name: Add host to groupname
         add_host: hostname={{ instance.address }} groupname=new_instances


   - name: Manage new instances
     hosts: new_instances
     connection: ssh
     sudo: True
     roles:
       - base_configuration
       - production_server

Note that use of the "add_host" module above creates a temporary, in-memory group.  This means that a play in the same playbook can then manage machines
in the 'new_instances' group, if so desired.  Any sort of arbitrary configuration is possible at this point.

For more information about Google Cloud, please visit the `Google Cloud website <https://cloud.google.com>`_.