https://chronosphere.io/ – Third Party Cloud Monitoring Solution

Chronocollector: – https://github.com/Perfect10NickTailor/chronocollector

This role deploys the chronocollector management service which sends the data to domain.chronosphere.io For those of you who don’t know what it is. Its basically a cloud monitoring tool that scrapes data on your instances and then you can create dashboards or even export the data to promethus to make it look pretty and easy to read. You will likely pay for subscription, they will give you a subdomain which becomes your gateway address (domain.chronosphere.io)

Special note: You then need to deploy the node_exporter to push to the hosts you want scraped. That is a separate playbook and stupid easy.

#nowthatsjustfunny: So its debatable on how to approach passing {{ api_keys }} in a scalable and secure way. A lot of people create an “ansible vault encrypted variable”. This is so that when they push their code to their git repos. The {{ api_key }} isn’t exposed to someone simply glancing by the code. The issue with this approach is now you have to remember a vault password to pass to ansible, so it can decrypt the {{ api_key }} to pass, inorder for it to work when you run the playbook.(LAME)

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#nowthatsjustcool: So just for the purposes of this post and for fun. I wrote it so that you can simply pass the {{ api_key }} during runtime. This way instead of being prompted for the vault-pass, you are prompted for the api_key to pass as a variable when you run the book. This gets rid of the need to setup a encrypted variable in your code entirely. Everyone has their own way of doing things, but I tend to think outside the box, so it always way more fun to be different in how you think.

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Ansible Operational Documentation

How to use this role:

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Running your playbook:

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– hosts: all

  gather_facts: no

  vars_prompt:

  – name: api_key

    prompt: Enter the API key

  roles:

    – role: chronocollector

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Command:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/dev/hosts.dev chronocollector.yml -u nickadmin -Kkb –ask-become –limit=’testmachine3′

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Successful run:

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Notice: It asks you for the API key at runtime.

ntailor@jumphost:~/ansible2$ ansible-playbook -i ansible/inventory/dev/hosts.dev chronocollector.yml -u nicktadmin -Kkb –ask-become –limit=’testmachine3′

SSH password:

BECOME password[defaults to SSH password]:

Enter the API key:

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PLAY [all] ***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

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TASK [chronocollector : download node collector] *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

ok: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : move collector to /usr/local/bin] ****************************************************************************************************************************************************************

ok: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : mkdir directory /etc/chronocollector] ************************************************************************************************************************************************************

ok: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : Copy default config.yml to /etc/chronocollector/] ************************************************************************************************************************************************

ok: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : Touch again the same file, but do not change times this makes the task idempotent] ***************************************************************************************************************

changed: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : Ensure API key is present in config file] ********************************************************************************************************************************************************

changed: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : Change file ownership, group and permissions apitoken file to secure it from prying eyes other than root] ****************************************************************************************

changed: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : Check that the service file /etc/systemd/system/collector.service exists] ************************************************************************************************************************

ok: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : Include add systemd task if service file does not exist] *****************************************************************************************************************************************

included: ansible/roles/chronocollector/tasks/systemd.yml for testmachine3

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TASK [chronocollector : Create startup file for collector in systemd] ****************************************************************************************************************************************************

changed: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : Create systemd collector.service] ****************************************************************************************************************************************************************

changed: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : check whether custom line exists] ****************************************************************************************************************************************************************

changed: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : Start Collector Service via systemd] *************************************************************************************************************************************************************

changed: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : Show status of collector from systemd] ***********************************************************************************************************************************************************

changed: [testmachine3]

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TASK [chronocollector : debug] *******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

ok: [testmachine3] => {

“status.stdout”: ” Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2022-05-19 10:31:49 BST; 315ms ago”

}

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PLAY RECAP ***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

testmachine3 : ok=15 changed=8 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0