Playbooks

There are sample playbooks that demonstrate the IBM z/OS CICS collection functionality in the samples repository.

Playbook Documentation

An Ansible playbook consists of organized instructions that define work for a managed node (host) to be managed with Ansible.

Samples that contains multiple example playbooks are included in the Ansible Z playbook repository. The sample playbooks are for reference and can be run with the ansible-playbook command with some modification to their inventory, ansible.cfg and group_vars as well as updates to their module parameters to reference your CICS artifacts and configuration.

You can find the playbook content that is included with the collection in the same location where the collection is installed. For more information, refer to the installation documentation. In the following examples, this document will refer to the installation path as ~/.ansible/collections/ibm/ibm_zos_cics.

Sample Configuration and Setup

Each release of Ansible provides options in addition to the ones identified in the sample configurations that are included with this collection. These options allow you to customize how Ansible operates in your environment. Ansible supports several sources to configure its behavior and all sources follow the Ansible precedence rules.

The Ansible configuration file ansible.cfg can override almost all ansible-playbook configurations.

You can specify the SSH port used by Ansible and instruct Ansible where to write the temporary files on the target. This can be easily done by adding the options to your inventory or ansible.cfg.

An example of adding these options to ansible.cfg is shown below.

[defaults]
forks = 25
remote_tmp = /u/ansible/tmp
remote_port = 2022

For more information about available configurations for ansible.cfg, read the Ansible documentation on Ansible configuration settings.

Inventory

Ansible works with multiple managed nodes (hosts) at the same time, using a list or group of lists known as an inventory. Once the inventory is defined, you can use patterns to select the hosts or groups that you want Ansible to run against.

Included in the CICS deploy program sample is an example inventory file which shows how host information is supplied to Ansible. It looks like the following:

source_system:
  hosts:
    zos_host:
      ansible_host: zos_target_address
      ansible_user: zos_target_username
      ansible_python_interpreter: path_to_python_interpreter_binary_on_zos_target

The value for the property ansible_host is the hostname of the managed node; for example, ansible_host: ec33017A.vmec.svl.ibm.com

The value for the property zos_target_username is the user name to use when connecting to the host; for example, ansible_user: omvsadm.

The value for the property ansible_python_interpreter is the target host Python path. This is useful for systems with more than one Python installation, or when Python is not installed in the default location /usr/bin/python; for example, ansible_python_interpreter: /usr/lpp/rsusr/python36/bin/python

For more information on Python configuration requirements on z/OS, refer to Ansible FAQ.

Behavioral inventory parameters such as ansible_port which allows you to set the port for a host can be reviewed in the behavioral inventory parameters.

Group_vars

Although you can store variables in the inventory file, storing separate host and group variables files may help you organize your variable values more easily. An example of one of these variable files is the zos_host.yml file included with the deploy_program sample, which is used to provide the required environment variables.

The value for the property BPXK_AUTOCVT must be configured to ON.

The value for the property ZOAU_HOME is the ZOA Utilities install root path; for example, /usr/lpp/IBM/zoautil.

The value for the property PYTHONPATH is the ZOA Utilities Python library path; for example, /usr/lpp/IBM/zoautil/lib/.

The value for the property LIBPATH is both the path to the Python libraries on the target and the ZOA Utilities Python library path separated by colons :; for example, /usr/lpp/IBM/zoautil/lib/:/usr/lpp/rsusr/python36/lib:/lib:/usr/lib:..

The value for the property PATH is the ZOA utilities BIN path and the Python interpreter path; for example, /usr/lpp/IBM/zoautil/bin:/usr/lpp/rsusr/python36/bin/python:/bin.

The included sample variables file (zos_host.yml) contains variables specific to the playbook as well as the following:

environment_vars:
   _BPXK_AUTOCVT: ON
   ZOAU_HOME: '/usr/lpp/IBM/zoautil'
   PYTHONPATH: '/usr/lpp/IBM/zoautil/lib'
   LIBPATH: '/usr/lpp/IBM/zoautil/lib/:/usr/lpp/rsusr/python36/lib:/usr/lib:/lib:.'
   PATH: '/usr/lpp/IBM/zoautil/bin:/usr/lpp/rsusr/python36/bin/python:/bin'

Note

In ZOAU 1.0.2 and later, the property ZOAU_ROOT is no longer supported and can be replaced with the property ZOAU_HOME. If you are using ZOAU version 1.0.1 or lower, you must continue to use the property ZOAU_ROOT which is the ZOA Utilities install root path required for ZOAU; for example, /usr/lpp/IBM/zoautil.

Module Defaults

Ansible has a module defaults feature to use the same values during every use of a module, rather than repeating them everytime. Here we can set the host url and credentials of the cmci_get module to be the same throughout the playbook.

module_defaults:
  ibm.ibm_zos_cics.cmci_get:
    cmci_host: "{{ cmci_host }}"
    cmci_user: "{{ cmci_user }}"
    cmci_password: "{{ cmci_password }}"

If you wish to use the same values in all CMCI modules, you can assign them to the group called cmci_group.

module_defaults:
  group/ibm.ibm_zos_cics.cmci_group:
    cmci_host: "my.system.host"
    cmci_port: "system.port.number"
    cmci_user: "my.username"
    cmci_password: "my.password"

Note

Group module defaults are only available in ansible-core 2.12 or later. If this syntax is used with ansible-core 2.11 or earlier, the values are perceived as not present, and a ‘missing required arguments’ error is thrown.

Run the playbook

Access the collection samples repository and ensure you have navigated to the directory containing the playbook you want to run. For example: zos_subsystems/cics/cmci/deploy_program/.

Use the Ansible command ansible-playbook to run the sample playbook. The command syntax is ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook> which, using the example above of deploy_program, is ansible-playbook -i inventory deploy_program.yaml.

This command assumes that the controller’s public SSH key has been shared with the managed node. If you want to avoid entering a username and password each time, copy the SSH public key to the managed node using the ssh-copy-id command; for example, ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/mykey.pub user@<hostname>.

Alternatively, you can use the --ask-pass option to be prompted for the user’s password each time a playbook is run; for example, ansible-playbook -i inventory deploy_program.yaml --ask-pass.

Note

Using --ask-pass is not recommended because it will hinder performance.
Using --ask-pass requires sshpass be installed on the controller. For further reference, see the ask-pass documentation.

Optionally, you can configure the console logging verbosity during playbook execution. This is helpful in situations where communication is failing and you want to obtain more details. To adjust the logging verbosity, append more letter v’s; for example, -v, -vv, -vvv, or -vvvv. Each letter v increases logging verbosity similar to traditional logging levels INFO, WARN, ERROR, DEBUG.

Note

It is a good practice to review the playbook samples before executing them. It will help you understand what requirements in terms of space, location, names, authority, and artifacts will be created and cleaned up. Although samples are always written to operate without the need for the user’s configuration, flexibility is written into the samples because it is not easy to determine if a sample has access to the host’s resources. Review the playbook notes sections for additional details and configuration.

Playbooks often submit JCL that is included in the samples repository under the files directory. Review the sample JCL for necessary edits to allow for submission on the target system. The most common changes are to add a CLASS parameter and change the NOTIFY user parameter. For more details, see the JCL notes section included in the collection.