Ansible Automation Platform - Build execution environments

Ansible Automation Platform's Execution Environments offer a robust and efficient solution for managing automation workflows. By encapsulating playbook dependencies within a containerized environment, these environments ensure consistency and reproducibility across deployments, while also preventing conflicts with the underlying system's packages. This approach not only streamlines automation processes but also enhances security by isolating playbook execution, mitigating potential risks associated with dependency conflicts or vulnerabilities.

Before installing ansible-builder, confirm that the system has access to the required repositories. Once confirmed, proceed with the installation of ansible-builder and podman by running the command below:

 [archy@ansible ~]$ sudo dnf -y --refresh install ansible-builder podman  

Now, we'll create the execution-environment.yml file that defines the configuration for our Ansible Execution Environment. To keep the home-directory organized, we'll use a temporary directory for building this environment:

 [archy@ansible ~]$ mkdir -p -m 700 ~/temp  
 [archy@ansible ~]$ cd ~/temp  
 [archy@ansible ~]$ cat << EOF > execution-environment.yml  
 ---  
 version: 1  
 ansible_config: ansible.cfg  
 build_arg_defaults:  
   EE_BASE_IMAGE: registry.redhat.io/ansible-automation-platform-25/ee-minimal-rhel9:latest  
   EE_BUILDER_IMAGE: registry.redhat.io/ansible-automation-platform/ansible-builder-rhel9:latest  
 dependencies:  
   galaxy: requirements.yml  
   python: requirements.txt  
   system: bindep.txt  
 EOF  

While dependencies are optional, any specified dependencies must be included in the build. This execution environment requires specific collections, Python packages, and system packages to function correctly. To manage these, we'll create the necessary dependency files and include them in our build process:

 [archy@controller ~]$ cat << EOF > requirements.yml  
 ---  
 collections:  
   - name: ansible.posix  
   - name: ansible.utils  
   - name: community.general  
 EOF  
 [archy@ansible ~]$ cat << EOF > requirements.txt  
 pymongo  
 kubernetes  
 ipapython  
 paramiko  
 netaddr  
 EOF  
 [archy@controller ~]$ cat << EOF > bindep.txt  
 rsync  
 EOF  

Now that we have created execution-environment.yml and the dependency files, we can use ansible-builder to create the build skeleton. This will generate the necessary directory structure and configuration files for our execution environment:

 [archy@ansible ~]$ ansible-builder create  

With the build skeleton in place, we can now use podman to build and publish the execution environment container image to the automationhub:

 [archy@controller ~]$ podman build -f context/Containerfile -t automationhub.archyslife.lan/custom/ee-custom-rhel9:$(date +%F) --arch amd64 --pull=true context  
 [archy@controller ~]$ podman push automationhub.archyslife.lan/custom/ee-custom-rhel9:$(date +%F)  

The newly built execution environment is now available within the automationhub.

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