gluster-ansible integration

[brainfunked]

Gadmin has a dependency on gluster-ansible. gluster-ansible implements various system tasks that are needed by Gadmin to provide end user workflows. This tasks include setting up of a gluster cluster in various scenarios and system level operations required for some management functionality as well.

The integration with gluster-ansible is proposed to function as follows:

• Playbook YAML templates need to be maintained for various workflows that are enabled via gadmin.
• During the execution of a command, gadmin would populate a playbook file by filling in the variables based on user inputs.
• This filled-in playbook file is stored in the job's directory structure.
• Gadmin execute ansible against this playbook.
• gluster-ansible needs to ship with a plugin that enables ansible to directly write a parsable output (YAML, JSON etc.) in a defined format, per playbook, in the job's directory structure. Gadmin would need to supply the filename to write the output to at the time of execution.
• Gadmin monitors the exit status of the ansible execution to figure out the success or failure.
• Gadmin shows the output of the job being executed by reading and parsing the output file written by gluster-ansible.

The following details need to be figured out:

• Which project maintains and ships the playbooks? To me, gluster-ansible seems like the right place. It may be possible that in some scenarios, gadmin specific playbooks need to be maintained because gluster-ansible's default playbook doesn't fit into Gadmin's command structure. The actual playbooks themselves would need to be used/developed on a per-command basis in Gadmin.
• Plugin implementation needs to be done in gluster-ansible. The format for the file written needs to be documented.
• Are ansible's exit statuses well defined?

@sac @devyanikota

[sac]

It is better if the playbooks are maintained in gadmin project. Anybody working on gadmin wanting to change the behaviour would not be modifying two repositories. And these playbooks are part of and specifically written for gadmin.

Again plugin implementation will not fit into gluster-ansible project. Because gluster-ansible is about roles. And related modules (as exceptions, if at all). Plugins are python programs which we copy into ansible source tree at the time of installation (if they are not yet merged into ansible src tree yet). And this plugin installation happens at the time of gadmin installation. And installation is carried out in gadmin spec file. It is not required to install the plugin when gluster-ansible is installed.