About this document
This document is intended to facilitate the deployment of Red Hat Ansible for IBM® FlashSystem. The document showcases the automation and orchestration of storage provisioning and copy services, such as Global Mirror, Global Mirror with change volumes, and Metro Mirror for IBM FlashSystem® in hybrid cloud environments that use Red Hat Ansible. To complete the tasks it describes, you must understand IBM FlashSystem and Red Hat Ansible.
The information in this document is distributed on an “as is” basis without any warranty that is either expressed or implied. Support assistance for the use of this material is limited to situations where IBM FlashSystem storage devices are supported and entitled and where the issues are specific to a blueprint implementation.
Executive summary
In today’s world with the speed, scale, and complexity of hybrid cloud and even traditional on-premises environments, automation is a top priority. IBM FlashSystem family for Hybrid Multicloud includes Ansible integration. This integration allows IT to create an Ansible playbook that automates the tasks that are repeated across an organization in a consistent way, which improves outcomes and reducing risk. It also standardizes how IT and application owners interact.
Automation is becoming an integral part these days, with IT environments that are complex and must scale up or down quickly for system administrators and developers to meet business requirements. Ansible is becoming popular for orchestration automation because of following reasons:
•You can customize your environment based on your needs in on-premises or hybrid multicloud environments, which gives it agility and flexibility.
•With Ansible and IBM Storage, clients can easily use cutting-edge technology by automating tasks, such as configuration management, provisioning, workflow orchestration, application deployment, and lifecycle management.
•By using Ansible and IBM Storage, clients can reduce system inconsistencies with the automation modules.
•Ansible can also be used to configure end-to-end infrastructure in an orchestrated fashion.
•Ansible provides a single pane of glass visibility to multi-cluster, multicloud environments. Lines of business can use those playbooks to meet their goals without needing to understand the details of how the work is done.
IBM is a Red Hat Certified Support Module Vendor. It provides simple management for IBM FlashSystem and IBM Spectrum® Virtualize.
Scope
This blueprint guide provides:
•A solutions architecture and related solution configuration workflows, with the following essential software and hardware components:
 – IBM FlashSystem
 – IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud on IBM Cloud® or AWS
 – Red Hat Ansible 2.9 or higher
•Detailed technical configuration steps for building the Ansible playbooks
This technical report does not:
•Provide performance analysis from a user perspective
•Replace any official manuals and documents that are issued by IBM
Prerequisites
This technical paper assumes that the user has basic knowledge of the following products:
•IBM FlashSystem
•IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud on AWS and IBM Cloud
•Red Hat Ansible
Getting started: Automation using Ansible for IBM FlashSystem
This section describes the essential building material for running Ansible playbooks and automating and orchestrating tasks for IBM FlashSystem by using Ansible.
IBM FlashSystem family
IBM FlashSystem family is an excellent platform to simplify your hybrid multicloud storage.
The new IBM FlashSystem family simplifies storage for hybrid cloud environments. With a unified set of software, tools and APIs, IBM FlashSystem addresses the entire range of storage needs, all from one data platform that extends enterprise functions across the storage network environment.
With IBM Spectrum Virtualize software, the IBM FlashSystem family is an industry-leading storage solution that includes technologies that complement and enhance virtual environments to achieve a simpler, more scalable, and cost-efficient IT infrastructure.
To further drive your IT transformation, IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud offers multiple ways to create hybrid cloud solutions between on-premises private clouds and the public cloud. It enables real-time storage-based data replication and disaster recovery, and data migration between local storage and AWS. This replication enables storage administration at a cloud service provider’s site in the same way as on-premises, regardless of the type of storage.
Consider the following points regarding IBM FlashSystem storage solutions:
•NVMe-accelerated flash arrays with control enclosures that are end-to-end NVMe-enabled, with flexibility to choose and mix between IBM FlashCore® Modules, industry standard NVMe drives and Storage-Class Memory. The systems offer industry-leading performance and scalability with support for bare-metal, virtual, and containerized environments.
•Built with IBM Spectrum Virtualize, with a full range of industry-leading data services such as dynamic tiering, IBM FlashCopy® management, data mobility, and high-performance data encryption, among many other data management features
•Hybrid cloud ready, with support for private, hybrid, or public cloud deployments. The solutions include ready-to-use, proven, validated “cloud blueprints” with support for cloud API automation and secondary data orchestration software.
•Cost-efficient, with innovative data reduction pool (DRP) technology that includes deduplication and hardware-accelerated compression technology, plus SCSI UNMAP support and all the thin provisioning, copy management, and efficiency you’d expect from IBM® Spectrum Virtualize based storage.
•Hybrid storage enabled, with multiple expansion enclosure options based on 12 Gbps SAS that supports solid-state drives (SSD) and hard disk drives (HDD).
•IBM FlashSystem® is ready for new generation applications, and supports Red Hat OpenShift, Container Storage Interface (CSI), Ansible automation, and Kubernetes along with traditional VMWare and bare metal environments.
•IBM Cloud® Satellite™ helps you deploy consistently across all on-premises, edge computing and public cloud environments from any cloud vendor. The result is greater developer productivity and development velocity. IBM FlashSystem family is the perfect storage choice for IBM Cloud Satellite™ because of its simplicity, high performance, and low latency.
As a Red Hat Certified Support Module Vendor, IBM provides simple management for the storage provisioning commands that are used in the IBM Spectrum® Virtualize Ansible Collection. For more information, see this web page.
These capabilities include:
•Basic Automation and Orchestration for storage provisioning:
◦ Collect facts: Gather array information, such as hosts, host groups, snapshots, consistency groups, and volumes
◦ Manage hosts: Create, delete, or modify hosts
◦ Manage volumes: Create, delete, or extend the capacity of volumes
◦ Manage MDisk: Create or delete a managed disk
◦ Manage Pool: Create or delete a pool (managed disk group)
◦ Manage Volume Map: Create or delete a volume map
•Advance Automation and Orchestration for Snapshot management:
◦ Manage Snapshots: Create, delete, start, and stop snapshot mappings
◦ Manage Snapshot consistency groups: Create, Delete, start, and stop consistency groups
◦ Manage Clones: Create, Delete, start, stop clone mappings
•Advance Automation and Orchestration for Remote copy management for FlashSystem:
◦ Manage Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, and GMCV relationships: Create, Delete, Modify relationships
◦ Manage Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, and GMCV Consistency Groups: Create, Delete, Modify Consistency Groups
◦ Start or stop Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, and GMCV relationships or consistency groups
◦ Start or Stop relationships or consistency groups
◦ Create Change Volume Create Change Volume by using the provided base volume
The same Ansible modules can be used for automating IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud in AWS because it is one code base for IBM FlashSystem Storage on premises and IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud software that is running in public clouds, such as AWS and IBM Cloud.
IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud in AWS
IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud is a version of IBM Spectrum Virtualize implemented in a cloud environment.
Designed for public cloud IaaS, IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud is a solution for public cloud implementations and includes technologies that complement and enhance public cloud IaaS offering capabilities.
IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud enables deployment of IBM Spectrum Virtualize-based software in public clouds: IBM Cloud and AWS. IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud on AWS is a BYOL (Bring your Own License) offering that can be purchased as a perpetual or a monthly license.
IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud (see Table 1) can be deployed on AWS IaaS by way of the AWS Marketplace to enable hybrid cloud solutions. It offers the ability to transfer data between on-premises data centers by using any IBM Spectrum Virtualize-based system and AWS.
Table 1 IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud at a glance
Storage supported
AWS EBS block storage
Licensing approach
Simple, flat cost per managed Terabyte monthly licensing, or perpetual licensing
Platform
IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud on AWS installed on supported EC2 instance
 
Ansible Playbook: Sample configuration architecture
Figure 1 shows the architecture that was deployed in lab to showcase the orchestration and automation of storage replication by using Global Mirror with change volume (GMCV) with a consistency group.
In this sample configuration, two IBM FlashSystem 9100 units are used, which are designated as FlashSystem #1 and #2.
Figure 1 Sample configuration architecture
The sample configuration demonstrates the following automation steps of using IBM Spectrum Virtualize Ansible modules:
1. Create a VDisk on IBM FlashSystem.
2. Create a consistency group.
3. Create the GMCV relationship.
4. Start and stop the GMCV replication.
 
Figure 2 shows the architecture of the use of the same Ansible modules for replication between on-premises FlashSystem storage and the IBM Spectrum Virtualize instance running in AWS cloud by using IBM Spectrum Virtualize native IP replication capabilities.
Figure 2 Sample configuration for hybrid cloud Ansible automation for replication
Configuring and installing Ansible and IBM Spectrum Virtualize modules
This section describes the configuration and deployment of Ansible.
Ansible is an agentless automation management tool that uses the SSH protocol. Ansible can be run from any machine with Python 2 (version 2.7) or Python 3 (versions 3.5 and higher) installed, including Red Hat, Debian, CentOS, macOS, and any of the BSDs.
 
Note: Windows is not supported for the control node.
For more information about installing Ansible for each operating system, see this web page.
For IBM Spectrum Virtualize modules, Ansible version 2.9 or higher is required.
For more information about installing the IBM Spectrum Virtualize modules, see this web page.
After the IBM Spectrum Virtualize modules are installed, the tree structure of the collection looks as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3 Collection tree structure
Creating an Ansible playbook for replication using Global Mirror and Metro Mirror
This section provides describes how to create the Ansible playbook for an IBM Spectrum Virtualize system for replication using Global Mirror and Global Mirror with change Volume and Metro Mirror.
An Ansible playbook is an organized unit of scripts that defines work or tasks for managing infrastructure (in this case IBM Spectrum Virtualize by the automation tool. Ansible plays are written in yaml.
The playbook is the core component of any Ansible configuration. An Ansible playbook contains one or multiple plays, each of which defines a task to be done for a configuration on a managed storage system.
In the solution lab test environment, the sample playbook for GMCV between two FlashSystem 9100 with a consistency group is shown in Figure 4 on page 12.
This single playbook that is shown consists of the following parts:
•The first part is to create a VDisk on IBM FlashSystem that is in the sample playbook (referred to as FlashSystem_1 and FlashSystem_2) and create a consistency group.
•The second part of the playbook creates a GMCV relationship between the master and auxiliary volumes. It also creates a master change volume and auxiliary change volume.
The .vars file features all of the information about the username, password, and IP address of the storage system that is used, which are called variables in the playbook.
Figure 4 Sample Ansible playbook for GMCV replication between two IBM FlashSystem storages
After the playbook is run successfully, the volumes are created with the specified names and a GMCV relationship is established with the associated change volumes, as shown in Figure 5. The volume that is created on IBM FlashSystem 9100 is referred as FlashSystem_1 in the Ansible playbook.
Figure 5 Volume creation on primary IBM FlashSystem 9100 using Ansible playbook
Figure 6 shows the volume creation activity that is completed in the DRP_POOL on IBM FlashSystem 9100, which is referred as FlashSystem_2 volume creation.
Figure 6 Volume creation on secondary IBM FlashSystem 9100 using Ansible playbook
The GMCV relationship between the master and auxiliary volumes are created between two IBM FlashSystem 9100 storages with the consistency group name gmcv, as referenced in the Ansible playbook.
The GMCV relationship is stopped, as shown in Figure 7. To start the replication, use the Ansible module for starting and stopping the consistency group replication process.
Figure 7 Consistency group creation
After the consistency group is created, the change volume that was created for the master volume and auxiliary volume by using the Ansible module ibm_svc_manage_cv creates change volumes for the master and auxiliary base volumes, as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8 Figure 8: Change volume creation
Similar to the sample playbook that is shown in Figure 4 on page 12, the sample playbook for creating the Global Mirror relationship between IBM FlashSystem 9100 on-premises and IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud on an AWS instance is shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9 Playbook for creating and mapping VDisk and setting up replication
After this yaml file is created, the Ansible playbook is run, as shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10 Execution output of playbook
The Ansible playbook uses the following sequence:
1. Uses the ibm_svc_vdisk module and creates a 10 GB volume with the VDisk name that is dictated in the playbook.
2. Runs the second task by using the ibm_svc_vol_map module to map the volume to that host that is specified in the playbook.
3. Creates a VDisk with the specified name on IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud instance running in AWS.
4. Maps the volume to the EC2 instance running in AWS.
5. After the volume creation and mapping is complete, the playbook sets up the Global Mirror replication relationship and starts the replicating the VDisk from the on-premises FlashSystem 9100 to IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud instance running in AWS.
Summary
The deployment of multicloud environments is gaining much attention from organizations. With that attention brings the complexity of managing the on-premises and different cloud environments.
With simplicity in the storage platforms managing complex IT infrastructure, challenges can be addressed by using Orchestration and automation tools, such as Red Hat Ansible. With Red Hat Ansible, support for IBM FlashSystem clients can orchestrate and automate their storage infrastructure management on-premises or in a cloud environment seamlessly with a common tool set.
This solution paper discussed two sample playbooks that use IBM FlashSystem Ansible playbook collections for replicating and orchestrating the management of storage replication between two IBM FlashSystem storages between on-premises data centers.
The paper also showcased the sample playbook that can be used to orchestrate and manage a Global Mirror replication relationship in hybrid cloud environments between IBM FlashSystem 9100 on-premises and IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud on AWS.
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