Migrate Stand-alone Confluent Platform to Ansible Environment

Confluent Ansible Discovery is a tool that helps you to migrate a Confluent Platform cluster that was not originally installed by Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform (Confluent Ansible) to the Ansible environment.

The tool logs into each host and discovers which Confluent Platform services are running on the host, builds out properties for each Confluent Platform component, and maps them against the Confluent Ansible configurations. The output of the tool is an Ansible inventory file that represents your current Confluent Platform cluster. You can use that inventory file along with Ansible to manage and upgrade the Confluent Platform cluster.

It is recommended that you run the tool in a non-production environment and validate it manually.

Requirements

The following requirements are specific to Confluent Ansible Discovery and not for the Confluent Ansible managed nodes.

  • The host machine (where the Discovery tool is to run) has password-less SSH access to all Confluent Platform hosts.

  • The username has been provided if it is other than root.

  • All Confluent Platform hosts have the same Linux distribution installed.

  • Confluent Platform hosts and service names

    The discovery tool needs a list of hosts which is part of the existing cluster where Confluent Platform services are to be discovered.

    In addition to the list of hosts, the tool needs the Confluent service names. If the default service names have been changed to custom service names, provide the updated service names in the input file under the service_overrides section.

The following dependencies for Confluent Ansible Discovery must be installed on the machine where you plan to execute the tool from:

Run Confluent Ansible Discovery

  1. Create your input file in the .yml format, and specify the settings:

    vars:
  ansible_connection:             --- [1]
  ansible_become:                 --- [2]
  ansible_python_interpreter:     --- [3]
  ansible_user:                   --- [4]
  ansible_password:               --- [5]
  ansible_become_user:            --- [6]
  ansible_become_method:          --- [7]
  ansible_ssh_extra_args:         --- [8]
  ansible_ssh_private_key_file:   --- [9]
  from_version:                   --- [10]
  verbosity:                      --- [11]
  output_file:                    --- [12]
  service_overrides:              --- [13]
    zookeeper_service_name:
    kafka_broker_service_name:
    schema_registry_service_name:
    kafka_connect_service_name:
    kafka_rest_service_name:
    ksql_service_name:
    control_center_service_name:

    • [1] Required. The connection plugin used for the task on the target host. Specify ssh or docker.

    • [2] Boolean to use privileged. The default is False.

    • [3] Python interpreter path. The default is auto.

    • [4] The user to log into the hosts.

    • [5] The password for the user ([4]) to log into the hosts.

    • [6] The user after privilege escalation.

    • [7] The method to become privileged. The default is sudo.

    • [8] Extra arguments for SSH.

    • [9] The path to the private key for SSH login.

    • [10] Confluent Platform version that service properties are trying to discover.

      Has an effect only when some Confluent Ansible variables have changed over time. If there is no change in the Confluent Ansible variables, this property has no effect.

    • [11] Log level between 0 and 4, 4 being the most verbose. The default value is 3 (INFO).

    • [12] Output inventory file path. The default value is $(pwd)/inventory.yml.

    • [13] Use this section to override the default Confluent Platform service names when using custom service names. The name must include .service

      For example, if you are using myservice-zookeeper instead of the default confluent-zookeeper, set:

      service_overrides:
  zookeeper_service_name: myservice-zookeeper.service

      Note

      Even though custom service names are supported during the discovery process, the custom service names are not supported in Confluent Ansible. Confluent Ansible Discovery will be able to generate an inventory file from a cluster with custom service names, but when Confluent Ansible uses that inventory file to setup a cluster, it will setup the cluster with the default service names.

    The following is a snippet of a sample input file:

    vars:
  ansible_connection: ssh
  ansible_user: centos
  ansible_become: true
  ansible_ssh_extra_args: -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no
  ansible_ssh_private_key_file: ~/Work/keys/muckrake.pem

  2. In the input file, specify a list of Confluent Platform hosts that the Confluent Platform components are running.

    Confluent Ansible Discovery must be able to discover the Confluent Platform services.

    All Confluent Platform hosts must have the same Linux distribution installed.

    The user running the tool must be able to log into the hosts.

    • For a cluster with known host group mappings, specify a list of host groups and their hosts. Confluent Ansible Discovery will look for the configured services on the given hosts. Update the Confluent Platform service name if using custom service names for Confluent Platform components.

      The following is a sample input file for Confluent Ansible Discovery (hosts.yml) with known host group mappings.

      hosts:
  zookeeper:
    -
  kafka_broker:
    -
  schema_registry:
    -
  kafka_connect:
    -
  kafka_rest:
    -
  ksql:
    -
  control_center:
    -

      For example:

      hosts:
  zookeeper:
    - host-1.mydomain.com
    - host-2.mydomain.com
  kafka_broker:
    - host-3.mydomain.com
    - host-4.mydomain.com
  schema_registry:
    - host-5.mydomain.com
    - host-6.mydomain.com

    • For a cluster with unknown host group mappings, specify a list of hosts. In this case, Confluent Ansible Discovery will try to map the Confluent Platform service to the corresponding hosts.

      For example:

      hosts:
  all:
    - host-1.mydomain.com
    - host-2.mydomain.com
    - host-3.mydomain.com

  3. Run Confluent Ansible Discovery using the file you created in the previous step (<path-to-the-input-file>):

    cd <some_path>/ansible_collections/confluent/platform

PYTHONPATH=. python discovery/main.py --input <path-to-the-input-file> [optional arguments]

    The following arguments are supported. If the same setting exists in the input file, the command line argument overrides what is in the input file:

    • --input: The input file path.
    • --limit: A list of host names to be discovered. Use the flag to limit the discovery to a subset of hosts specified in the input file.
    • --from_version: Confluent Platform version that service properties are trying to discover. It only comes to the effect of some Confluent Ansible variable has changed over time. If there is no change in the Confluent Ansible variables, this property has no effect.
    • --verbosity: The verbosity level between 0 to 4, where 4 means more verbose.
    • --output_file: The output inventory file name. The efault value is ./inventory.yml.

    For example:

    python discovery/main.py \
  --input discovery/hosts.yml \
  --verbosity 4 \
  --limit host1,host2

Troubleshoot

Issue: The Discover tool returns an error that it failed to create the temporary directory.

The default Ansible temp directory might be locked by another Ansible process.

Solution:

  • Delete the Ansible home directory. Ansible home directory is defined in ansible.cfg, and the default is ~/.ansible.
  • Delete the ~/.cache directory.
  • Ensure that the VM/Host exists and you have access to the /tmp directory.
Issue: The Discovery tool is not able to determine a value for an inventory variable.
The tool skips adding that variable in the inventory file. When using this generated inventory file, Confluent Ansible uses the default value for the missing variable.

Known issues and limitations

  • If passwords are encrypted using secret encryption or any other encryption algorithm, this tool would not be able to decrypt them. You have to explicitly add the passwords in the generated inventory file in order to continue using the Confluent Ansible.
  • The input file doesn’t support regular expressions (regex) for the hosts name patterns.
  • Confluent Ansible Discovery doesn’t support the Confluent Platform community edition.
  • At the time of running the tool, the Confluent Platform services should be up and running. Otherwise, the tool will ignore those nodes/services.
  • If secrets protection is enabled on the cluster, the tool can populate the master key. However, all passwords should be filled in by the user before using the playbooks.