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      How to Implement Microsoft SQL Servers in a Private Cloud for Maximum Performance


      There are many considerations to take into account when implementing a Microsoft SQL Server in a private cloud environment. Today’s SQL dependent applications have different performance and high availability (HA) requirements. As a solutions architect, my goal is to provide our customers the best performing, highly available designs while managing budgetary concerns, scalability, supportability and total cost of ownership. Like so many tasks in IT infrastructure strategy, success is all about planning. There are many moving pieces and balancing everything to reach our goal becomes a challenge if we don’t ask the right questions up front.

      In this two-part series, I’ll share my approach to scoping, sizing and designing private cloud infrastructure capable of migrating or standing up new Microsoft SQL Server environments. In part one, I’ll identify performance considerations and provide real world examples to make sure that your SQL Server environment is ready to meet application, growth and DR requirements of your organization. In part two, I’ll focus on SQL Server deployment options with high availability.

      If you need a review on SQL server basics before we dive into the private cloud design, you can brush up here.

      Here’s what we’ll cover in this post, with links if you’d prefer to jump ahead:

      SQL Server Performance Considerations: RAM, IOPS, CPU and More

      What follows are the basic performance considerations to take into account when designing a Microsoft SQL Server environment.

      RAM—These requirements are based on database size and developer recommendations. Ideally, you’ll have enough RAM to put the entire database into RAM. However, that’s not always possible with large DB sizes. RAM is delicious to SQL and the server will eat it up, so be generous if your budget allows. Leave 20 percent of RAM reserved on the server for OS and other services.

      IOPS—The SQL Server is mostly a read/write machine, and its performance is dependent on disk IO and storage latency. With SSDs becoming more affordable, many SQL DBAs now prefer to run on SSDs due to high IOPS provided by SSD and NVMe drives. In the past, many 15K SAS disks in RAID10 were the norm for data volumes.

      Low latency is essential to SQL performance. By today’s standards, keeping latency below 5ms per IO is the norm. Sub 1ms latency is very common with local SSD storage. However, 10ms is still a good response time for most medium performance applications.

      CPU—Bare metal CPU allocation is easy. Your server has a number of CPUs and all of them can be allocated to SQL with no negative considerations, other than licensing costs. However, allocating CPU to a SQL Server in a VMWare private cloud environment should be done with caution. Licensing is based on CPU cores. Too much assigned, but unused, vCPU GHz in a VMWare VM can negatively impact performance. Rightsizing is key.

      The SQL Server is not normally a CPU hog. Unexpected and prolonged high CPU usage during production time means something is not right with the database or SQL code. Adding CPU in those cases may not solve the issue. These unexpected conditions should be checked by SQL DBAs and developers. Higher than normal CPU utilization is to be expected during maintenance time. In instances where a database may require high CPU utilization as a norm, a developer or SQL DBA should check the database for missing indexes or other issues before adding more vCPUs to virtual servers.

      SQL as a VM

      Based on the above considerations, when designing a SQL Server environment, budgetary and licensing considerations may start leaning your design toward SQL as a VM on a private cloud with a restricted number of assigned vCPUs. Running SQL on a private cloud is a great way to save on licensing costs. It’s also a good performer for most application loads, and because SQL is more of an IO-dependent system, its performance will greatly depend on the latency and IO availability of your storage system.

      Storage Systems IO Availability

      SAN storage will normally provide great amounts of IO based on the amount of disks and disk types on the SAN. The norm to expect from many SAN systems is 5ms to 15ms of latency per IO. When your application desires sub 1ms latency, such as gaming, financial or ad-tech systems, a local SSD RAID10 disk array will save the day. These local disk arrays are easy to set up and use with both VMs and bare metal server implementations. You may ask, “What about the HA and extra redundancy features of using a SAN instead of local disk?” I will be discussing High Availability in a performance-demanding environment in Part 2: Deploying Microsoft SQL Servers in a Private Cloud with High Availability. Check back soon.

      In the end, your application’s performance requirements and budget will drive your decision whether to run a private cloud or a bare metal SQL deployment. Both VM and bare metal deployments can be configured with high availability and will easily integrate into your private cloud environments.

      With these performance considerations in mind, let’s discuss other scoping and sizing matrices that we’ll need to design our high-performing and future-proofed SQL deployment.

      Scoping and Sizing for Microsoft SQL Deployments in a Private Cloud

      As a Solution Engineer at INAP, I collect numerous measurements during the SQL scoping process. Before delving into numbers, I start by evaluating pain points clients may have with their current SQL Servers. I want to know what hurts.

      Asking these and other questions helps me understand how to resolve issues and future proof your next SQL deployment:

      • Is it performing to your expectation?
      • Are you meeting your SQL database maintenance time window?
      • Do your users complain that their SQL dependent application freezes sometimes for no reason?
      • When was the last time you restored a database from your backup and how long did that take?
      • What’s your failover plan in case your production database server dies?
      • What backup software is being used for SQL?
      • Are your databases running in simple or full restore mode?

      Once I know the exact problem, or if I’m designing for a new application, I start by collecting specific technical details. The most common specific measurements and requirements collected during the scoping phase are:

      • DB sizes for all databases per SQL instance
      • Instances (Is there more than one SQL instance, and why?)
      • Growth requirements (Usually measured in daily change rate to help with other considerations like backups and replication for DR purposes)
      • RAM requirements & CPU requirements
      • Performance requirements, such as latency/ IO and IOPS requirements
      • HA requirements (Can your customer base wait for you to restore your SQL Server in case of an outage? How long does it take to restore?)
      • Regulatory/Compliance requirements such as HIPAA and PCI
      • Maintenance schedule (Do the maintenance jobs complete on time every day)
      • Replication requirements
      • Reporting requirements (Does this deployment need a reporting server so as to not interrupt production workloads)
      • Backup (What is used today to backup production data? Has it been tested? What are the challenges?)

      In environments requiring high performance database response times, we utilize native Windows Server tools, such as perfmon, to collect very detailed performance matrixes from exiting SQL Servers to identify performance bottlenecks and other considerations that help us resolve these issues in current or future database deployments. Because a good SQL Server’s performance is heavily dependent on the disk sub-systems, we will go deeper in disk design recommendations for private clouds, VMs and bare metal deployments.


      LEARN MORE

      SQL Server Disk Layout for Performance, HA and DR

      Separating database files into different disks is a best practice. It helps performance and helps your DBA easily identify performance issues when troubleshooting. For example, you could have a runaway query beating up your TempDB. If your TempDB is on a separate disk from your prod database files, you can easily identify that the TempDB disk is being thrashed and that same TempDB issue is not stepping on other workloads in your environments.

      For high performance requirements, SSDs are recommended. The following is a basic disk layout for performance:

      • Data (MDF, NDF files): Fast read/write disk, many drives in an array preferred for best performance
      • Index (NDF files, not often used): Fast read/write disk, many drives in an array preferred for best performance
      • Log (LDF files): Fast write performance, not much reading happens here
      • TempDB (Temp database to crunch numbers and formulas): Should be a fast disk. SSD is preferred. Do not combine with other data or log files.
      • Page File (NTFS): Keep this on a separate disk LUN or Array if possible. C: drive is not a good place for a page file on a SQL Server.

      In a SQL deployment that requires DR, the above disk layout will allow you to granularly replicate just the SQL data and the OS that needs to be replicated, leaving TempDB and pagefile out of the replication design since those files are reset during reboot. TempDB and pagefile also produce lots of noisy IO. Replicating those files will result in unnecessarily heavy bandwidth and disk utilization.

      Check back soon for Part 2: Deploying Microsoft SQL Servers in a Private Cloud with High Availability

      Rob Lerner


      READ MORE



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      How To Implement Continuous Testing of Ansible Roles Using Molecule and Travis CI on Ubuntu 18.04


      The author selected the Mozilla Foundation to receive a donation as part of the Write for DOnations program.

      Introduction

      Ansible is an agentless configuration management tool that uses YAML templates to define a list of tasks to be performed on hosts. In Ansible, roles are a collection of variables, tasks, files, templates and modules that are used together to perform a singular, complex function.

      Molecule is a tool for performing automated testing of Ansible roles, specifically designed to support the development of consistently well-written and maintained roles. Molecule’s unit tests allow developers to test roles simultaneously against multiple environments and under different parameters. It’s important that developers continuously run tests against code that often changes; this workflow ensures that roles continue to work as you update code libraries. Running Molecule using a continuous integration tool, like Travis CI, allows for tests to run continuously, ensuring that contributions to your code do not introduce breaking changes.

      In this tutorial, you will use a pre-made base role that installs and configures an Apache web server and a firewall on Ubuntu and CentOS servers. Then, you will initialize a Molecule scenario in that role to create tests and ensure that the role performs as intended in your target environments. After configuring Molecule, you will use Travis CI to continuously test your newly created role. Every time a change is made to your code, Travis CI will run molecule test to make sure that the role still performs correctly.

      Prerequisites

      Before you begin this tutorial, you will need:

      Step 1 — Forking the Base Role Repository

      You will be using a pre-made role called ansible-apache that installs Apache and configures a firewall on Debian- and Red Hat-based distributions. You will fork and use this role as a base and then build Molecule tests on top of it. Forking allows you to create a copy of a repository so you can make changes to it without tampering with the original project.

      Start by creating a fork of the ansible-apache role. Go to the ansible-apache repository and click on the Fork button.

      Once you have forked the repository, GitHub will lead you to your fork’s page. This will be a copy of the base repository, but on your own account.

      Click on the green Clone or Download button and you’ll see a box with Clone with HTTPS.

      Copy the URL shown for your repository. You’ll use this in the next step. The URL will be similar to this:

      https://github.com/username/ansible-apache.git
      

      You will replace username with your GitHub username.

      With your fork set up, you will clone it on your server and begin preparing your role in the next section.

      Step 2 — Preparing Your Role

      Having followed Step 1 of the prerequisite How To Test Ansible Roles with Molecule on Ubuntu 18.04, you will have Molecule and Ansible installed in a virtual environment. You will use this virtual environment for developing your new role.

      First, activate the virtual environment you created while following the prerequisites by running:

      • source my_env/bin/activate

      Run the following command to clone the repository using the URL you just copied in Step 1:

      • git clone https://github.com/username/ansible-apache.git

      Your output will look similar to the following:

      Output

      Cloning into 'ansible-apache'... remote: Enumerating objects: 16, done. remote: Total 16 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 16 Unpacking objects: 100% (16/16), done.

      Move into the newly created directory:

      The base role you've downloaded performs the following tasks:

      • Includes variables: The role starts by including all the required variables according to the distribution of the host. Ansible uses variables to handle the disparities between different systems. Since you are using Ubuntu 18.04 and CentOS 7 as hosts, the role will recognize that the OS families are Debian and Red Hat respectively and include variables from vars/Debian.yml and vars/RedHat.yml.

      • Includes distribution-relevant tasks: These tasks include tasks/install-Debian.yml and tasks/install-RedHat.yml. Depending on the specified distribution, it installs the relevant packages. For Ubuntu, these packages are apache2 and ufw. For CentOS, these packages are httpd and firewalld.

      • Ensures latest index.html is present: This task copies over a template templates/index.html.j2 that Apache will use as the web server's home page.

      • Starts relevant services and enables them on boot: Starts and enables the required services installed as part of the first task. For CentOS, these services are httpd and firewalld, and for Ubuntu, they are apache2 and ufw.

      • Configures firewall to allow traffic: This includes either tasks/configure-Debian-firewall.yml or tasks/configure-RedHat-firewall.yml. Ansible configures either Firewalld or UFW as the firewall and whitelists the http service.

      Now that you have an understanding of how this role works, you will configure Molecule to test it. You will write test cases for these tasks that cover the changes they make.

      Step 3 — Writing Your Tests

      To check that your base role performs its tasks as intended, you will start a Molecule scenario, specify your target environments, and create three custom test files.

      Begin by initializing a Molecule scenario for this role using the following command:

      • molecule init scenario -r ansible-apache

      You will see the following output:

      Output

      --> Initializing new scenario default... Initialized scenario in /home/sammy/ansible-apache/molecule/default successfully.

      You will add CentOS and Ubuntu as your target environments by including them as platforms in your Molecule configuration file. To do this, edit the molecule.yml file using a text editor:

      • nano molecule/default/molecule.yml

      Add the following highlighted content to the Molecule configuration:

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/molecule.yml

      ---
      dependency:
        name: galaxy
      driver:
        name: docker
      lint:
        name: yamllint
      platforms:
        - name: centos7
          image: milcom/centos7-systemd
          privileged: true
        - name: ubuntu18
          image: solita/ubuntu-systemd
          command: /sbin/init
          privileged: true
          volumes:
            - /lib/modules:/lib/modules:ro
      provisioner:
        name: ansible
        lint:
          name: ansible-lint
      scenario:
        name: default
      verifier:
        name: testinfra
        lint:
          name: flake8
      

      Here, you're specifying two target platforms that are launched in privileged mode since you're working with systemd services:

      • centos7 is the first platform and uses the milcom/centos7-systemd image.
      • ubuntu18 is the second platform and uses the solita/ubuntu-systemd image. In addition to using privileged mode and mounting the required kernel modules, you're running /sbin/init on launch to make sure iptables is up and running.

      Save and exit the file.

      For more information on running privileged containers visit the official Molecule documentation.

      Instead of using the default Molecule test file, you will be creating three custom test files, one for each target platform, and one file for writing tests that are common between all platforms. Start by deleting the scenario's default test file test_default.py with the following command:

      • rm molecule/default/tests/test_default.py

      You can now move on to creating the three custom test files, test_common.py, test_Debian.py, and test_RedHat.py for each of your target platforms.

      The first test file, test_common.py, will contain the common tests that each of the hosts will perform. Create and edit the common test file, test_common.py:

      • nano molecule/default/tests/test_common.py

      Add the following code to the file:

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_common.py

      import os
      import pytest
      
      import testinfra.utils.ansible_runner
      
      testinfra_hosts = testinfra.utils.ansible_runner.AnsibleRunner(
          os.environ['MOLECULE_INVENTORY_FILE']).get_hosts('all')
      
      
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('file, content', [
        ("/var/www/html/index.html", "Managed by Ansible")
      ])
      def test_files(host, file, content):
          file = host.file(file)
      
          assert file.exists
          assert file.contains(content)
      

      In your test_common.py file, you have imported the required libraries. You have also written a test called test_files(), which holds the only common task between distributions that your role performs: copying your template as the web servers homepage.

      The next test file, test_Debian.py, holds tests specific to Debian distributions. This test file will specifically target your Ubuntu platform.

      Create and edit the Ubuntu test file by running the following command:

      • nano molecule/default/tests/test_Debian.py

      You can now import the required libraries and define the ubuntu18 platform as the target host. Add the following code to the start of this file:

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_Debian.py

      import os
      import pytest
      
      import testinfra.utils.ansible_runner
      
      testinfra_hosts = testinfra.utils.ansible_runner.AnsibleRunner(
          os.environ['MOLECULE_INVENTORY_FILE']).get_hosts('ubuntu18')
      

      Then, in the same file, you'll add test_pkg() test.

      Add the following code to the file, which defines the test_pkg() test:

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_Debian.py

      ...
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('pkg', [
          'apache2',
          'ufw'
      ])
      def test_pkg(host, pkg):
          package = host.package(pkg)
      
          assert package.is_installed
      

      This test will check if apache2 and ufw packages are installed on the host.

      Note: When adding multiple tests to a Molecule test file, make sure there are two blank lines between each test or you'll get a syntax error from Molecule.

      To define the next test, test_svc(), add the following code under the test_pkg() test in your file:

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_Debian.py

      ...
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('svc', [
          'apache2',
          'ufw'
      ])
      def test_svc(host, svc):
          service = host.service(svc)
      
          assert service.is_running
          assert service.is_enabled
      

      test_svc() will check if the apache2 and ufw services are running and enabled.

      Finally you will add your last test, test_ufw_rules(), to the test_Debian.py file.

      Add this code under the test_svc() test in your file to define test_ufw_rules():

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_Debian.py

      ...
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('rule', [
          '-A ufw-user-input -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT'
      ])
      def test_ufw_rules(host, rule):
          cmd = host.run('iptables -t filter -S')
      
          assert rule in cmd.stdout
      

      test_ufw_rules() will check that your firewall configuration permits traffic on the port used by the Apache service.

      With each of these tests added, your test_Debian.py file will look like this:

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_Debian.py

      import os
      import pytest
      
      import testinfra.utils.ansible_runner
      
      testinfra_hosts = testinfra.utils.ansible_runner.AnsibleRunner(
          os.environ['MOLECULE_INVENTORY_FILE']).get_hosts('ubuntu18')
      
      
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('pkg', [
          'apache2',
          'ufw'
      ])
      def test_pkg(host, pkg):
          package = host.package(pkg)
      
          assert package.is_installed
      
      
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('svc', [
          'apache2',
          'ufw'
      ])
      def test_svc(host, svc):
          service = host.service(svc)
      
          assert service.is_running
          assert service.is_enabled
      
      
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('rule', [
          '-A ufw-user-input -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT'
      ])
      def test_ufw_rules(host, rule):
          cmd = host.run('iptables -t filter -S')
      
          assert rule in cmd.stdout
      

      The test_Debian.py file now includes the three tests: test_pkg(), test_svc(), and test_ufw_rules().

      Save and exit test_Debian.py.

      Next you'll create the test_RedHat.py test file, which will contain tests specific to Red Hat distributions to target your CentOS platform.

      Create and edit the CentOS test file, test_RedHat.py, by running the following command:

      • nano molecule/default/tests/test_RedHat.py

      Similarly to the Ubuntu test file, you will now write three tests to include in your test_RedHat.py file. Before adding the test code, you can import the required libraries and define the centos7 platform as the target host, by adding the following code to the beginning of your file:

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_RedHat.py

      import os
      import pytest
      
      import testinfra.utils.ansible_runner
      
      testinfra_hosts = testinfra.utils.ansible_runner.AnsibleRunner(
          os.environ['MOLECULE_INVENTORY_FILE']).get_hosts('centos7')
      

      Then, add the test_pkg() test, which will check if the httpd and firewalld packages are installed on the host.

      Following the code for your library imports, add the test_pkg() test to your file. (Again, remember to include two blank lines before each new test.)

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_RedHat.py

      ...
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('pkg', [
          'httpd',
          'firewalld'
      ])
      def test_pkg(host, pkg):
          package = host.package(pkg)
      
            assert package.is_installed
      

      Now, you can add the test_svc() test to ensure that httpd and firewalld services are running and enabled.

      Add the test_svc() code to your file following the test_pkg() test:

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_RedHat.py

      ...
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('svc', [
          'httpd',
          'firewalld'
      ])
        def test_svc(host, svc):
          service = host.service(svc)
      
          assert service.is_running
          assert service.is_enabled
      

      The final test in test_RedHat.py file will be test_firewalld(), which will check if Firewalld has the http service whitelisted.

      Add the test_firewalld() test to your file after the test_svc() code:

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_RedHat.py

      ...
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('file, content', [
          ("/etc/firewalld/zones/public.xml", "<service name="http"/>")
      ])
      def test_firewalld(host, file, content):
          file = host.file(file)
      
          assert file.exists
          assert file.contains(content)
      

      After importing the libraries and adding the three tests, your test_RedHat.py file will look like this:

      ~/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/test_RedHat.py

      import os
      import pytest
      
      import testinfra.utils.ansible_runner
      
      testinfra_hosts = testinfra.utils.ansible_runner.AnsibleRunner(
          os.environ['MOLECULE_INVENTORY_FILE']).get_hosts('centos7')
      
      
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('pkg', [
          'httpd',
          'firewalld'
      ])
      def test_pkg(host, pkg):
          package = host.package(pkg)
      
          assert package.is_installed
      
      
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('svc', [
          'httpd',
          'firewalld'
      ])
      def test_svc(host, svc):
          service = host.service(svc)
      
          assert service.is_running
          assert service.is_enabled
      
      
      @pytest.mark.parametrize('file, content', [
          ("/etc/firewalld/zones/public.xml", "<service name="http"/>")
      ])
      def test_firewalld(host, file, content):
          file = host.file(file)
      
          assert file.exists
          assert file.contains(content)
      

      Now that you've completed writing tests in all three files, test_common.py, test_Debian.py, and test_RedHat.py, your role is ready for testing. In the next step, you will use Molecule to run these tests against your newly configured role.

      Step 4 — Testing Against Your Role

      You will now execute your newly created tests against the base role ansible-apache using Molecule. To run your tests, use the following command:

      You'll see the following output once Molecule has finished running all the tests:

      Output

      ... --> Scenario: 'default' --> Action: 'verify' --> Executing Testinfra tests found in /home/sammy/ansible-apache/molecule/default/tests/... ============================= test session starts ============================== platform linux -- Python 3.6.7, pytest-4.1.1, py-1.7.0, pluggy-0.8.1 rootdir: /home/sammy/ansible-apache/molecule/default, inifile: plugins: testinfra-1.16.0 collected 12 items tests/test_common.py .. [ 16%] tests/test_RedHat.py ..... [ 58%] tests/test_Debian.py ..... [100%] ========================== 12 passed in 80.70 seconds ========================== Verifier completed successfully.

      You'll see Verifier completed successfully in your output; this means that the verifier executed all of your tests and returned them successfully.

      Now that you've successfully completed the development of your role, you can commit your changes to Git and set up Travis CI for continuous testing.

      Step 5 — Using Git to Share Your Updated Role

      In this tutorial, so far, you have cloned a role called ansible-apache and added tests to it to make sure it works against Ubuntu and CentOS hosts. To share your updated role with the public, you must commit these changes and push them to your fork.

      Run the following command to add the files and commit the changes you've made:

      This command will add all the files that you have modified in the current directory to the staging area.

      You also need to set your name and email address in the git config in order to commit successfully. You can do so using the following commands:

      Commit the changed files to your repository:

      • git commit -m "Configured Molecule"

      You'll see the following output:

      Output

      [master b2d5a5c] Configured Molecule 8 files changed, 155 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) create mode 100644 molecule/default/Dockerfile.j2 create mode 100644 molecule/default/INSTALL.rst create mode 100644 molecule/default/molecule.yml create mode 100644 molecule/default/playbook.yml create mode 100644 molecule/default/tests/test_Debian.py create mode 100644 molecule/default/tests/test_RedHat.py create mode 100644 molecule/default/tests/test_common.py

      This signifies that you have committed your changes successfully. Now, push these changes to your fork with the following command:

      • git push -u origin master

      You will see a prompt for your GitHub credentials. After entering these credentials, your code will be pushed to your repository and you'll see this output:

      Output

      Counting objects: 13, done. Compressing objects: 100% (12/12), done. Writing objects: 100% (13/13), 2.32 KiB | 2.32 MiB/s, done. Total 13 (delta 3), reused 0 (delta 0) remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (3/3), completed with 2 local objects. To https://github.com/username/ansible-apache.git 009d5d6..e4e6959 master -> master Branch 'master' set up to track remote branch 'master' from 'origin'.

      If you go to your fork's repository at github.com/username/ansible-apache, you'll see a new commit called Configured Molecule reflecting the changes you made in the files.

      Now, you can integrate Travis CI with your new repository so that any changes made to your role will automatically trigger Molecule tests. This will ensure that your role always works with Ubuntu and CentOS hosts.

      Step 6 — Integrating Travis CI

      In this step, you're going to integrate Travis CI into your workflow. Once enabled, any changes you push to your fork will trigger a Travis CI build. The purpose of this is to ensure Travis CI always runs molecule test whenever contributors make changes. If any breaking changes are made, Travis will declare the build status as such.

      Proceed to Travis CI to enable your repository. Navigate to your profile page where you can click the Activate button for GitHub.

      You can find further guidance here on activating repositories in Travis CI.

      For Travis CI to work, you must create a configuration file containing instructions for it. To create the Travis configuration file, return to your server and run the following command:

      To duplicate the environment you've created in this tutorial, you will specify parameters in the Travis configuration file. Add the following content to your file:

      ~/ansible-apache/.travis.yml

      ---
      language: python
      python:
        - "2.7"
        - "3.6"
      services:
        - docker
      install:
        - pip install molecule docker
      script:
        - molecule --version
        - ansible --version
        - molecule test
      

      The parameters you've specified in this file are:

      • language: When you specify Python as the language, the CI environment uses separate virtualenv instances for each Python version you specify under the python key.
      • python: Here, you're specifying that Travis will use both Python 2.7 and Python 3.6 to run your tests.
      • services: You need Docker to run tests in Molecule. You're specifying that Travis should ensure Docker is present in your CI environment.
      • install: Here, you're specifying preliminary installation steps that Travis CI will carry out in your virtualenv.
        • pip install molecule docker to check that Ansible and Molecule are present along with the Python library for the Docker remote API.
      • script: This is to specify the steps that Travis CI needs to carry out. In your file, you're specifying three steps:
        • molecule --version prints the Molecule version if Molecule has been successfully installed.
        • ansible --version prints the Ansible version if Ansible has been successfully installed.
        • molecule test finally runs your Molecule tests.

      The reason you specify molecule --version and ansible --version is to catch errors in case the build fails as a result of ansible or molecule misconfiguration due to versioning.

      Once you've added the content to the Travis CI configuration file, save and exit .travis.yml.

      Now, every time you push any changes to your repository, Travis CI will automatically run a build based on the above configuration file. If any of the commands in the script block fail, Travis CI will report the build status as such.

      To make it easier to see the build status, you can add a badge indicating the build status to the README of your role. Open the README.md file using a text editor:

      Add the following line to the README.md to display the build status:

      ~/ansible-apache/README.md

      [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/username/ansible-apache.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/username/ansible-apache)
      

      Replace username with your GitHub username. Commit and push the changes to your repository as you did earlier.

      First, run the following command to add .travis.yml and README.md to the staging area:

      • git add .travis.yml README.md

      Now commit the changes to your repository by executing:

      • git commit -m "Configured Travis"

      Finally, push these changes to your fork with the following command:

      • git push -u origin master

      If you navigate over to your GitHub repository, you will see that it initially reports build: unknown.

      build-status-unknown

      Within a few minutes, Travis will initiate a build that you can monitor at the Travis CI website. Once the build is a success, GitHub will report the status as such on your repository as well — using the badge you've placed in your README file:

      build-status-passing

      You can access the complete details of the builds by going to the Travis CI website:

      travis-build-status

      Now that you've successfully set up Travis CI for your new role, you can continuously test and integrate changes to your Ansible roles.

      Conclusion

      In this tutorial, you forked a role that installs and configures an Apache web server from GitHub and added integrations for Molecule by writing tests and configuring these tests to work on Docker containers running Ubuntu and CentOS. By pushing your newly created role to GitHub, you have allowed other users to access your role. When there are changes to your role by contributors, Travis CI will automatically run Molecule to test your role.

      Once you're comfortable with the creation of roles and testing them with Molecule, you can integrate this with Ansible Galaxy so that roles are automatically pushed once the build is successful.



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