In this post, we will discuss automating Kubernetes deployment using Ansible.

In my example, I have used CentOS VMs (on VMware) for deploying Kubernetes. But technically Kubernetes deployment steps don’t differ irrespective of the platform you use.

Before getting started to make sure you have

• Ansible server up and running on the network. Also, make sure Ansible can reach the VMware environment.
• Make sure you’ve added Ansible server SSH authentication keys into VMware virtual machine before converting the same into the template. Follow this blog post for steps.

Once you have the pre-requisites in place follow the below steps.

Step 1 – Clone my GitHub repository which consists of required playbooks and instructions.

[root@alb-ansible dw-pm-csi]# git clone https://github.com/waghmaredb/ansible-k8s
Cloning into 'ansible-k8s'…
remote: Enumerating objects: 41, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (41/41), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (40/40), done.
remote: Total 41 (delta 12), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (41/41), done.
[root@alb-ansible dw-pm-csi]# cd ansible-k8s/
[root@alb-ansible ansible-k8s]# ls
k8s-deployment.yml README.md

Step 2 – Edit k8s-deployment.yml file and edit below lines from VARS

common environment details
#ntp_server: - Replace with your NTP server IP/hostname
domain: "" - Replace with your DOMAIN NAME
dns_server: - Replace with your DNS server IP/hostname
vmware environment details
vcenter_ip: - Replace with your vCenter server IP/hostname
vcenter_username: - Replace with vCenter admin account username
vcenter_password: - Replace with vCenter admin account password
vmware_datacenter: - Replace with VMware datacenter you want to use
vmware_cluster: - Replace with VMware cluster you want to use
vm_network: "" - Replace with VM network you want kubernetes VMs to connect
k8s_vm_folder: - Replace with VM folder in which you want to place kubernetes VMs
k8s_template_name: - Replace with VMware CentOS template name
K8S environment details
k8s_master_ip: 192.168.172.100 - Replace IP address with kubernetes master server IP address you want to use
k8s_network_netmask: 255.255.255.0 - Replace subnet mask with netmask of kubernetes network
k8s_network_gateway: 192.168.172.1 - Replace gateway with kubernetes network gateway
k8s_node1_ip: 192.168.172.101 - Repalce IP address with kubernetes node IP address
#k8s_node2_ip: 192.168.1.102
#k8s_node3_ip: 192.168.1.103
#k8s_node4_ip: 192.168.1.104
#k8s_node5_ip: 192.168.1.105
#k8s_node6_ip: 192.168.1.106
#k8s_node7_ip: 192.168.1.107
#k8s_node8_ip: 192.168.1.108

Step 3 – Edit the /etc/ansible hosts file and insert the Kubernetes environment details. Make sure IP address details are inline with your Kubernetes environment

[kube_cluster1]
k8s-master ansible_host=192.168.172.100 ansible_user=root
worker1 ansible_host=192.168.172.101 ansible_user=root
worker2 ansible_host=192.168.172.102 ansible_user=root
worker3 ansible_host=192.168.172.103 ansible_user=root
worker4 ansible_host=192.168.172.104 ansible_user=root

[master]
k8s-master ansible_host=192.168.172.100 ansible_user=root

[worker]
worker1 ansible_host=192.168.172.101 ansible_user=root
worker2 ansible_host=192.168.172.102 ansible_user=root
worker3 ansible_host=192.168.172.103 ansible_user=root
worker4 ansible_host=192.168.172.104 ansible_user=root

Step 4 – Run the k8s-deployment.yml playbook.