vagrant/website/docs/source/v2/provisioning/ansible_local.html.md

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Ansible Local - Provisioning	provisioning-ansible-local

Ansible Local Provisioner

Provisioner name: ansible_local

The Ansible Local provisioner allows you to provision the guest using Ansible playbooks by executing ansible-playbook directly on the guest machine.

Warning: If you're not familiar with Ansible and Vagrant already, I recommend starting with the shell provisioner. However, if you're comfortable with Vagrant already, Vagrant is a great way to learn Ansible.

Setup Requirements

The main advantage of the Ansible Local provisioner in comparison to the Ansible (remote) provisioner is that it does not require any additional software on your Vagrant host.

On the other hand, Ansible must obviously be installed on your guest machine(s).

Note: By default, Vagrant will try to automatically install Ansible if it is not yet present on the guest machine (see the install option below for more details).

Usage

This page only documents the specific parts of the ansible_local provisioner. General Ansible concepts like Playbook or Inventory are shortly explained in the introduction to Ansible and Vagrant.

The Ansible Local provisioner requires that all the Ansible Playbook files are available on the guest machine, at the location referred by the provisioning_path option. Usually these files are initially present on the host machine (as part of your Vagrant project), and it is quite easy to share them with a Vagrant Synced Folder.

Simplest Configuration

To run Ansible from your Vagrant guest, the basic Vagrantfile configuration looks like:

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|

  #
  # Run Ansible from the Vagrant VM
  #
  config.vm.provision "ansible_local" do |ansible|
    ansible.playbook = "playbook.yml"
  end

end

Requirements:

• The playbook.yml file is stored in your Vagrant's project home directory.

• The default shared directory is enabled (. → /vagrant).

Options

This section lists the specific options for the Ansible Local provisioner. In addition to the options listed below, this provisioner supports the common options for both Ansible provisioners.

• install (boolean) - Try to automatically install Ansible on the guest system.

  This option is enabled by default.

  Vagrant will to try to install (or upgrade) Ansible when one of these conditions are met:

  • Ansible is not installed (or cannot be found).

  • The version option is set to "latest".

  • The current Ansible version does not correspond to the version option.

  Attention: There is no guarantee that this automated installation will replace a custom Ansible setup, that might be already present on the Vagrant box.

• provisioning_path (string) - An absolute path on the guest machine where the Ansible files are stored. The ansible-playbook command is executed from this directory.

  The default value is /vagrant.

• tmp_path (string) - An absolute path on the guest machine where temporary files are stored by the Ansible Local provisioner.

  The default value is /tmp/vagrant-ansible

• version (string) - The expected Ansible version.

  This option is disabled by default.

  When an Ansible version is defined (e.g. "1.8.2"), the Ansible local provisioner will be executed only if Ansible is installed at the requested version.

  When this option is set to "latest", no version check is applied.

  Attention: It is currently not possible to use this option to specify which version of Ansible must be automatically installed. With the install option enabled, the latest version packaged for the target operating system will always be installed.

Tips and Tricks

Ansible Parallel Execution from a Guest

With the following configuration pattern, you can install and execute Ansible only on a single guest machine (the "controller") to provision all your machines.

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|

  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64"

  config.vm.define "node1" do |machine|
    machine.vm.network "private_network", ip: "172.17.177.21"
  end

  config.vm.define "node2" do |machine|
    machine.vm.network "private_network", ip: "172.17.177.22"
  end

  config.vm.define 'controller' do |machine|
    machine.vm.network "private_network", ip: "172.17.177.11"

    machine.vm.provision :ansible_local do |ansible|
      ansible.playbook       = "example.yml"
      ansible.verbose        = true
      ansible.install        = true
      ansible.limit          = "all" # or only "nodes" group, etc.
      ansible.inventory_path = "inventory"
    end
  end

end

You need to create a static inventory file that corresponds to your Vagrantfile machine definitions:

controller ansible_connection=local
node1      ansible_ssh_host=172.17.177.21 ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/vagrant/.vagrant/machines/node1/virtualbox/private_key
node2      ansible_ssh_host=172.17.177.22 ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/vagrant/.vagrant/machines/node2/virtualbox/private_key

[nodes]
node[1:2]

And finally, you also have to create an ansible.cfg file to fully disable SSH host key checking. More SSH configurations can be added to the ssh_args parameter (e.g. agent forwarding, etc.)

[defaults]
host_key_checking = no

[ssh_connection]
ssh_args = -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o IdentitiesOnly=yes