Task: Deploy Consul

Infrastructure deployment for VMs using Ansible.

Repository contains simulated VMs aganst which you may run the deployment playbooks. Linting and automation is out of scope of this repo.

Also check the community version!

Quick start: Setup and install Consul to local simulated VMs

1. Setup and activate python virtual environment.

    python3 -m venv venv
    source venv/bin/activate
   

2. Make sure python requirements are installed: pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Start simulation VMs:

    docker compose up -d
   

   NOTE that the simulator generates new SSH keys each time the docker image is rebuilt, thus, when you ssh into containers, you will get your known_hosts polluted. You should clean it up after use...

4. Move to the ansible folder, list hosts and ping simulator VMs

    cd ansible
    ansible -i inventory/simulator.yaml all --list-hosts
    ansible -i inventory/simulator.yaml all -m ping
   

5. Install Consul: ansible-playbook -i inventory/simulator.yaml playbooks/local-simulator.yaml

6. Try to connect with a consul client(docker exec consul-client consul members) should return something like:

    Node     Address             Status  Type    Build   Protocol  DC       Partition  Segment
    server1  192.168.160.3:8301  alive   server  1.15.1  2         dc-test  default    <all>
    server2  192.168.160.5:8301  alive   server  1.15.1  2         dc-test  default    <all>
    server3  192.168.160.2:8301  alive   server  1.15.1  2         dc-test  default    <all>
    client1  192.168.160.4:8301  alive   client  1.15.1  2         dc-test  default    <default>
   

7. Open UI: open http://localhost:8500/

Simulated VMs as local playground

Simulated VMs are nothing more than docker containers with python and sshd agent installed and running. They may be started using the docker-compose.yaml, which will also bring up the Consul client.

Requirements

• python3 (v3.8 or grater) using venv for virtual environments
• when using simulator, docker with docker compose is used
• knowledge of Ansible