Using Ansible to Automate Application Updates.

akugel | Oct. 11, 2022, 10:52 a.m.

Hey y’all. I did a thing! So we had a rather time consuming process for one of our solutions. Basically every month we had to deploy a directory to every one of our clients sql servers. We would download the file from my company’s portal, upload it to the target sql server, extract it, and move it to the application install directory on the sql server. This process would take 3-5 hours, once a month. Now that is all streamlined using ansible.

Now all I have to do is sftp the file once to the orchestration server my organization is using for a ansible host. After that I run my ansible playbook which:

1. Copies the file to the target server using the win_copy ansible module
2. Extracts the file. The file is actually a cabinet file. I believe this compression method was chosen sometime in the late 90’s and has yet to be changed. I use win_shell to run the expand.exe utility in system32
3. Drops the file in the correct install directory.
4. Deletes the file from the staging location.

Perhaps not the most complex contraption in history, but it feels awesome to be able to contribute to the organization using my ansible skills. Excited for what the future holds!

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