Itzikr's Blog

A joint post by Anuraj PD

The Ansible module for Dell PowerFlex enables the administrators to automate the provisioning and management of Dell PowerFlex using Ansible. The ansible module for PowerFlex is hosted in the GitHub repository ansible-powerflex. Also, you can read more about the ansible modules from here.

Here we will see how to automate a workflow of provisioning a volume and mapping to SDC, then configuring the replication of the volume across two different PowerFlex systems. The setup includes two PowerFlex array PF02 (source) and PF03 (target), both systems are peered together and completed the necessary setup for configuring the replication. Also, the hosts are connected to the source PowerFlex.

Ansible module for PowerFlex uses the python SDK for PowerFlex to configure the system. Install the python SDK for PowerFlex on the ansible host.

Install the ansible collection for PowerFlex from ansible galaxy. The collection contains various modules for configuring the PowerFlex systems. We can use the ansible-doc command to get more details about the modules included in the collection.

Ansible Playbook and var files to automate the workflow.

Execute the Playbook.

Verify the RCG and replication pair status from the PowerFlex GUI.

Playbook for deleting the replication and cleanup of the PowerFlex configuration.

Below, you can see a demo, how it all look.