Introduction
updated:
date: 26-08-2025
This document describes a testing environment in ansible that is not ment to check
your code, but to test the functionality of the platform your code implements...
Most organizations have linting and testing for ansible code in place, but in complex
enviroments, testing of functionality is mostly done after delivery in the testing environment.
Testing in development before delivery, can speedup delivery and help your department
to deliver 'First Time Right' platforms.
It also enables developers to do regression tests on changed platforms. Just run it again..
An additional goal was, it has must run from the command line and in 'Tower or AWX', without modifications.
This gives great power, not having to wait for the run to start in tower, just run it from
the commandline.....
Or shedule all tests on a regular basis, just to be sure..
With that goal in mind, this was created.
The code explained here is created with collections in mind. To test idividual roles the base code must be somewhat adapted.
If you understand what I am doing here, you can
What does it do?
Out of the box? almost nothing...
Just the framework is in the repository, no tests that run on any platform
It just does one thing 'out of the box', checkout your configured repository
to a local directory and run a syntax check, the rest is up to you.
If you use custom credentials in Ansible Automation Platform, it can check the
presence of them before the run starts.
If you use a vault role, it will also check it out and use the vars defined in them
What more do we need?
- a webserver for the reporting (csv)file (can also be a ordinary server)
- maybe grafana reading the csv for dashboard
As the test playbok runs, it will write its status 3 times into the remote report.csv: - RUNNING - FAILED - SUCCESS along with a number of other fields that identify the running code..
Yust create a simple dashboard, and show your code maturity
The simple way
A more colorfull (management) version
What can it do?
Your creativity is the only limit this framework has....
Examples are:
Oracle dataguard testing
Runnning a complete baseline test on an Oracle dataguard cluster, with switchovers,
failovers, data retension tests and pluggable database verifications in between the
scenarios.
All in one run
Loadbalacer tests
A load balancer does nothing without an applicaion behind it, so we created a test platform with:
2 apache servers
2 loadbalancer nodes (ipvs in this case)
The first test is a verification if it all works..
After that the play orchestrates failures on all parts of the platform and verifies that the page
on the site is still serviced.
Only when all tests pass, the platform may be delivered.
This gives assurance that your code is correct.
How do we implement this?
Read the next pages to find out more on how to implement the test plan.
Get Your Copy into Git and configuration
Get Your Copy into Git and configuration
writing test playbooks
Running your tests
The code explained
Automate the hell out of IT...