.. note:: This section of the documentation is under construction. We are in the process of adding more examples about all of the GCE modules and how they work together.
The GCE modules require the apache-libcloud module, which you can install from pip:
.. code-block:: bash
$ pip install apache-libcloud
.. note:: If you're using Ansible on Mac OS X, libcloud needs to access a CA cert chain. You'll need to download one (you can get one for `here <http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html>`_.)
Credentials
-----------
To work with the GCE modules, you'll first need to get some credentials. You can create new one from the `console <https://console.developers.google.com/>`_ by going to the "APIs and Auth" section. Once you've created a new client ID and downloaded the generated private key (in the `pkcs12 format <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKCS_12>`_), you'll need to convert the key by running the following command:
When using the inventory script ``gce.py``, you need to populate the ``gce.ini`` file that you can find in the inventory directory.
Host Inventory
--------------
The best way to interact with your hosts is to use the gce inventory plugin, which dynamically queries GCE and tells Ansible what nodes can be managed.
gce.py
++++++
To use the GCE dynamic inventory script, copy ``gce.py`` from ``plugings/inventory`` into your inventory directory and make it executable. You can specify credentials for ``gce.py`` using the ``GCE_INI_PATH`` environment variable.
Let's test our inventory script to see if it can talk to Google Cloud.
.. code-block:: bash
$ GCE_INI_PATH=~/.gce.ini ansible all -i gce.py -m setup
hostname | success >> {
"ansible_facts": {
"ansible_all_ipv4_addresses": [
"x.x.x.x"
],
The recommended way to use the inventory is to create an ``inventory`` directory, and place both the ``gce.py`` script and a file containing ``localhost`` in it.
Executing ``ansible`` or ``ansible-playbook`` and specifying the ``inventory`` directory instead of an individual file will cause ansible to evaluate each file in that directory for inventory.
Let's test our inventory script to see if it can talk to Google Cloud:
.. code-block:: bash
$ ansible all -i inventory/ -m setup
hostname | success >> {
"ansible_facts": {
"ansible_all_ipv4_addresses": [
"x.x.x.x"
],
The output should be similar to the previous command.
Use Cases
---------
For the following use case, I'm using a small shell script as a wrapper.
.. code-block:: bash
#!/bin/bash
PLAYBOOK="$1"
if [ -z $PLAYBOOK ]; then
echo "You need to pass a playback as argument to this script."
exit 1
fi
export SSL_CERT_FILE=$(pwd)/cacert.cer
export ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=False
if [ ! -f "$SSL_CERT_FILE" ]; then
curl -O http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem
fi
ansible-playbook -v -i inventory/ "$PLAYBOOK"
Create an instance
``````````````````
The GCE module provides the ability to provision instances within Google Compute Engine. The provisioning task is typically performed from your Ansible control server against Google Cloud's API.
