Author: tappehl

Original text to be found here: https://www.commonsweden.org/borja-med-ansible-pa-ibm-i/

Writer: Håkan Sjödin

(Translated from Swedish with Microsoft Word translator)

For those of you who have not started looking at Ansible and do not see the benefit of Ansible. Already if you have one job that you will do on several machines, you benefit from starting to look at Ansible, even if it is different job each time. Once you set up Ansible, you start saving TIME. It is possible to expand the use of Ansible all the time. It may feel difficult to get started but I can guarantee when it is up and running you will just want to do more things in Ansible.

Here is a link to how to install Ansible:
Installing Ansible — Ansible Documentation
Here is also a quick link to what opportunities you have to do with Ansible for IBMi:
Modules — IBM power_ibmi collection 1.0.0 documentation

Here’s a job I usually get to do a couple of times a week: rename files, FTP files to the systems and edit in a .ini file, restart subsystems. It took about 30-40 minutes per machine if everything went smoothly. Now it takes 30 seconds and really not much slows down if I run all the machines at once max 5 minutes so I have free done about 17 hours of my work week to do other more fun things on.

0:00:30.619 *******
===============================================================================
transfering new version of jnrpe-plugins-x.x.x.jar and jt400-xx.x.jar files ————————————————————————–
7.81s
transfering new version of shell scripts ————————————————————————————————————- 5.19s
transfering new version of cacerts files to etc —————————————————————————————————— 2.65s
create new version of jnrpe.ini from template and update ip address ———————————————————————————-
2.45s
rename current version of shell scripts to create a backup copy ————————————————————————————–
1.70s
rename current version of jnrpe-plugins and jt400 files to create a backup copy ———————————————————————-
1.54s
Recursively remove backup files in fi.crosskey/old backup directory ———————————————————————————-
1.52s
start jnrpe subsystem ——————————————————————————————————————————– 1.09s
end jnrpe subsystem ———————————————————————————————————————————- 1.09s
rename current version of jnrpe.ini to create a backup copy ——————————————————————————————
0.75s
find and register current version of jnrpe-plugins and jt400 files ———————————————————————————– 0.73s
rename current version of cacerts to create a backup copy ——————————————————————————————–
0.72s
find and register current version of cacerts file —————————————————————————————————- 0.69s
Recursively remove etc/old backup directory ——————————————————————————————————— 0.62s
find and register current version of shell scripts ————————————————————————————————— 0.62s
Creates fi.crosskey/old directory ——————————————————————————————————————– 0.61s
Creates etc/old directory ————————————————————————————————————————– 0.61s
get ip address of target —————————————————————————————————————————– 0.15s
print ip address of target ————————————————————————————————————————— 0.04s
—————————————————————————- 1.99s
find and register current version of cacerts file —————————————————————————————————- 1.97s
get ip address of target —————————————————————————————————————————– 0.29s
print ip address of target ————————————————————————————————————————— 0.03s

So if you calculate how long a job takes and then multiply it by the number of environments you have. Then imagine how much time you save on running it with Ansible and knowing that all machines get the same (the risk of making errors is minimal if you have tested and checked that everything is correct).

It will be a lot of time in the end.
Håkan Sjödin