Creating an Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set using Ansible

In the world of cloud computing, scalability is a critical requirement for many organizations. When it comes to managing virtual machines, Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets is a powerful solution that provides automatic scaling of VMs. Ansible, the popular configuration management tool, also provides a module for managing VM Scale Sets in Azure. In this article, we will explore how to create an Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set using Ansible.

Overview of Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Before we dive into the details of creating a VM Scale Set, let's first understand what it is and how it works. A VM Scale Set is a group of identical, load-balanced virtual machines that can automatically scale up or down based on demand or a schedule. This makes it easy to deploy and manage a set of VMs, while also providing high availability and scalability.

A VM Scale Set can be created in Azure using either the Azure Portal, Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell. In this article, we will use Ansible to create the VM Scale Set.

Creating an Azure VM Scale Set with Ansible

The Ansible module for Azure VM Scale Sets is azure_rm_virtualmachinescaleset. This module provides a simple way to create, update, and delete VM Scale Sets in Azure. Let's take a look at the playbook in detail.

The playbook starts with defining the hosts and variables required for creating the VM Scale Set. The variables include vmss_vm_size, vmss_admin_username, vmss_capacity, and vmss_tier. These variables are used to define the size of each VM, the admin username for the VMs, the number of VMs in the Scale Set, and the pricing tier for the Scale Set.

The playbook then uses the azure.azcollection.azure_rm_keyvaultsecret_info module to retrieve the administrator password for the virtual machines from an Azure Key Vault. This module retrieves the password and registers it as a variable admin_password.

The playbook then prints debug information about the administrator password using the ansible.builtin.debug module.

Finally, the azure_rm_virtualmachinescaleset module is used to create the VM Scale Set with the specified configuration. The azure_rm_virtualmachinescaleset module creates the Scale Set with the following configuration:

  • The virtual machines in the Scale Set are created in the specified virtual network and subnet.
  • The virtual machines use an UbuntuServer image from the Canonical publisher with version 20.04-LTS.
  • The virtual machines have a 20 GB read-only data disk attached at LUN 0.
  • The virtual machines have the specified custom data file injected.
  • The virtual machines are associated with the specified application gateway.
  • The virtual machines have their OS disks cached with ReadWrite and use Standard_LRS managed disks.

Links

  • [azure.azcollection.azure_rm_virtualnetwork](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/azure/azcollection/azure_rm_virtualnetwork_module.html)