Introducing automation in CI infrastructureMichal TyminskiBuild Engineer

INTRODUCTION

Where I work• Intel Corporation, Folsom, CA

What is my role• Technical Leader of US part of Build Team

What is my team responsibility• Supporting Build environment for Intel GFX driver

What is the purpose of this presentation• What problems did we solve with Ansible and what benefits came from this?

Share your automation story

1. How did you get started with Ansible?

2. How long have you been using it?

3. What's your favorite thing to do when you Ansible?

Pre-Automation Era

• Only certain team members knew how to deploy and configure systems

• Every machine was different as every person had different ways of work

• Lack of proper communication and documentation

Common issues

Automation Attempts

It has to be better way...

• CI server

• PowerShell / Bash

• Fabric

Automation for everyone

New foundations

• Everyone in team must use same tool

• Tool must be easily accesible

• Tool must be easy to use and understand how it works • Must be version controlled

• No more manual changes

Beginings

Our choice: Ansible + Gerrit

Why ansible? • It is easy to start with and understand• It uses YAML descriptive language• It is modular

Why Gerrit? • Leverage Git SCM• Provides Code review functionalities

Code quality by code review

Mandatory Code

Review

Automated validation

Code Quality

Code quality by code reviewyamllint --strict

ansible-lint

ansible-playbook -- syntax-check

Custom script looking for hosts in more than one inventory

Custom script looking for orphaned host and group vars

Manual code review

Future is now

Current state• 1550+ commits

• 4 inventories

• 1300 + hosts

• 80+ roles

Ecosystem

AnsibleGerritAWX

vCenter

Hyper-V

Zabbix

iLO

Windows OS

Linux OS

Benefits

• Knowledge is widespread across the team

• Learning trough code review

• Better bus factor

• Possibility to perform infra tasks by non-infra members or experts

• Team has time for improvements