getting-started-ansible-new.md

copyright	lastupdated	keywords	subcollection
years 2017, 2025	2025-01-17	get started with schematics, infrastructure management, infrastructure as code, iac, schematics cloud environment, schematics infrastructure, schematics terraform, terraform provider	schematics

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Using actions to perform configuration management

{: #getting-started-ansible}

Use one of the {{site.data.keyword.IBM}} provided Ansible playbooks to start and stop {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_full}}. {: shortdesc}

An Ansible playbook{: external} is a set of instructions or automation tasks that you can configure to run on a single target host or a group of hosts. You create a {{site.data.keyword.bpshort}} action that points to your playbook and use the built-in Ansible capabilities in to run the instructions in your playbook. For more information about how {{site.data.keyword.bpshort}} runs your Ansible playbooks? see Configuration management with {{site.data.keyword.bplong_notm}}.

Before you begin

{: #ansible-prereq}

Before you can use this Ansible playbook, you must complete the following tasks:

• Make sure that you have the permissions to Create a {{site.data.keyword.bpshort}} actions.

• Create an {{site.data.keyword.vpc_full}} and a {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_short}}. For more information, see Getting started with Virtual Private Cloud (VPC){: external}.

  Note your Private or Floating IP address of your {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_short}}. {: note}

Starting and stopping {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_short}}

{: #ansible-vsi}

1. Log in to {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} console{: external}.
2. Click the Menu icon > Platform Automation > Schematics > Ansible{: external}.
3. Enter a name for your action, for example, Stop_VSIaction, resource group, and the region where you want to create the action. Then, click Create to view the Details section.
4. Click Edit icon and enter https://github.com/Cloud-Schematics/ansible-is-instance-actions in the GitHub or GitLab repository URL field.
5. Click Retrieve playbooks.
6. Select the stop-vsi-playbook.yaml playbook. see floating IP address{: external} of the VSI to set your input variable.
7. Expand the Advanced options.
8. In the Define your variables section, enter instance_ip as the key and the floating IP address of your {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_short}} as the value.
9. Click Save.
10. Click Check action to verify your action details. The Jobs page opens automatically and you can view the results of this check by looking at the logs.
11. Click Run action to stop the {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_short}}. You can monitor the progress of this action by reviewing the logs on the Jobs page.
12. Verify that your {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_short}} stopped.
    1. From the {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_short}} dashboard{: external}, find your {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_short}}.
    2. Verify that your instance shows a Stopped status.
13. Optional: Repeat the steps in this getting started tutorial to create another action, and select the start-vsi-playbook.yaml Ansible playbook to start your {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_short}} again.

You used the built-in Ansible capabilities of {{site.data.keyword.bpshort}} to start and stop a {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_short}} instance.

What's next?

{: #ansible-whats-next}

Now that you ran first operation on an {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} resource, you can explore the following options:

• Learn how to create your own Ansible playbooks.
• Explore other IBM-provided playbooks{: external}.
• Set up the {{site.data.keyword.bpshort}} CLI or API to start automating the configuration of {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} resources.