Run Playbooks with Ansible

Pigsty uses Ansible to manage clusters, a very popular large-scale/batch/automation ops tool in the SRE community.

Ansible can use declarative approach for server configuration management. All module deployments are implemented through a series of idempotent Ansible playbooks.

For example, in single-node deployment, you’ll use the deploy.yml playbook. Pigsty has more built-in playbooks, you can choose to use as needed.

Understanding Ansible basics helps with better use of Pigsty, but this is not required, especially for single-node deployment.

Deploy Playbook

Pigsty provides a “one-stop” deploy playbook deploy.yml for the core path: CA/software repository, NODE, INFRA, ETCD, PGSQL, and MINIO when enabled in the inventory. Optional modules such as Redis, Kafka, and native MySQL require their own module playbooks even when defined in the inventory.

This is the simplest deployment method. You can also follow instructions in Customization Guide to incrementally complete deployment of all modules and nodes step by step.

Install Ansible

When using the Pigsty installation script or the bootstrap phase of offline installation, Pigsty will automatically install ansible and its dependencies for you.

If you want to manually install Ansible, refer to the following instructions. The minimum supported Ansible version is 2.9.

sudo apt install -y ansible python3-jmespath

sudo dnf install -y ansible python3.12-jmespath python3-cryptography  # EL 8
sudo dnf install -y ansible python3-jmespath                           # EL 9
sudo dnf install -y ansible                                            # EL 10

brew install ansible
pip3 install jmespath

Ansible is also available on macOS. You can use Homebrew to install Ansible on Mac, and use it as an admin node to manage remote cloud servers. This is convenient for single-node Pigsty deployment on cloud VPS, but not recommended in prod envs.

Execute Playbook

Ansible playbooks are executable YAML files containing a series of task definitions to execute. Running playbooks requires the ansible-playbook executable in your environment variable PATH. Running ./node.yml playbook is essentially executing the ansible-playbook node.yml command.

You can use some parameters to fine-tune playbook execution. The following 4 parameters are essential for effective Ansible use:

./node.yml                         # Run node playbook on all hosts
./pgsql.yml -l pg-test             # Run pgsql playbook on pg-test cluster
./infra.yml -t repo_build          # Run infra.yml subtask repo_build
./pgsql-rm.yml -l pg-test -e pg_rm_pkg=false --check # Preflight removal while keeping packages
./infra.yml -i conf/mynginx.yml    # Use another location's config file

Limit Hosts

Playbook execution targets can be limited with -l|--limit <selector>. This is convenient when running playbooks on specific hosts/nodes or groups/clusters. Here are some host limit examples:

./pgsql.yml                              # Run on all hosts (dangerous!)
./pgsql.yml -l pg-test                   # Run on pg-test cluster
./pgsql.yml -l 10.10.10.10               # Run on single host 10.10.10.10
./pgsql.yml -l pg-*                      # Run on hosts/groups matching glob `pg-*`
./pgsql.yml -l '10.10.10.11,&pg-test'    # Run on 10.10.10.11 in pg-test group
./pgsql-rm.yml -l 'pg-test,!10.10.10.11' --check # Preflight removal; verify target and backups before execution

See all details in Ansible documentation: Patterns: targeting hosts and groups

Limit Tasks

Execution tasks can be controlled with -t|--tags <tags>. If specified, only tasks with the given tags will execute instead of the entire playbook.

./infra.yml -t repo          # Create repo
./node.yml  -t node_pkg      # Install node packages
./pgsql.yml -t pg_install    # Install PG packages and extensions
./etcd.yml  -t etcd_config   # Render ETCD configuration again
./minio.yml -t minio_alias   # Write the mcli client alias

To run multiple tasks, specify multiple tags separated by commas -t tag1,tag2:

./node.yml  -t node_repo,node_pkg   # Add repos, then install packages
./pgsql.yml -t pg_hba,pg_reload     # Configure, then reload pg hba rules

Extra Vars

You can override config parameters at runtime using CLI arguments, which have highest priority.

Extra command-line parameters are passed via -e|--extra-vars KEY=VALUE, usable multiple times:

# Create admin using another admin user
./node.yml -e ansible_user=admin -k -K -t node_admin

# Initialize a specific Redis instance: 10.10.10.11:6379
./redis.yml -l 10.10.10.10 -e redis_port=6379 -t redis

# Remove PostgreSQL but keep packages and data
./pgsql-rm.yml -l pg-test -e pg_rm_pkg=false -e pg_rm_data=false --check

For complex parameters, use JSON strings to pass multiple complex parameters at once:

# Add repo and install packages
./node.yml -t node_install -e '{"node_repo_modules":"infra","node_packages":["duckdb"]}'

Specify Inventory

The default config file is pigsty.yml in the Pigsty home directory.

You can use -i <path> to specify a different inventory file path.

./pgsql.yml -i conf/rich.yml            # Initialize single node with all extensions per rich config
./pgsql.yml -i conf/ha/full.yml         # Initialize 4-node cluster per full config
./pgsql.yml -i conf/app/supa.yml        # Initialize 1-node Supabase deployment per supa.yml

Convenience Scripts

Pigsty provides a series of convenience scripts to simplify common operations. These scripts are in the bin/ directory:

bin/node-add   <cls>            # Add nodes to Pigsty management: ./node.yml -l <cls>
bin/node-rm    <cls>            # Remove nodes from Pigsty: ./node-rm.yml -l <cls>
bin/pgsql-add  <cls>            # Initialize PG cluster: ./pgsql.yml -l <cls>
bin/pgsql-rm   <cls>            # Remove PG cluster: ./pgsql-rm.yml -l <cls>
bin/pgsql-user <cls> <username> # Add business user: ./pgsql-user.yml -l <cls> -e username=<user>
bin/pgsql-db   <cls> <dbname>   # Add business database: ./pgsql-db.yml -l <cls> -e dbname=<db>
bin/redis-add  <cls>            # Initialize Redis cluster: ./redis.yml -l <cls>
bin/redis-rm   <cls>            # Remove Redis cluster: ./redis-rm.yml -l <cls>

These scripts are simple wrappers around Ansible playbooks, making common operations more convenient.

Playbook List

Below are the built-in playbooks in Pigsty. You can also easily add your own playbooks, or customize and modify playbook implementation logic as needed.