Connect with the Azure team at AnsibleFest

I am super excited to attend my first AnsibleFest, where the Azure team team will deliver new demos and sessions about Ansible integration with Azure and Visual Studio Code (VS Code). Read on for more details about the sessions, upcoming releases, and how to connect with the Azure team at the event.

Ansible modules for Azure

Ansible 2.7 will be released on Oct 4th. 21 new modules for Azure will be available to enable web app scenarios for Ansible on Azure, as well as enhanced container, database, and infrastructure support.

Besides modules for Azure services, you can also use Ansible modules for Azure deployment to call ARM templates or Rest APIs to provision or configure any Azure resources. Here is the AnsibleFest session where you can learn more:

Using Ansible to deploy workloads on Microsoft Azure
Stuart Kirk and Zim Kalinowski from Microsoft
Tuesday, October 2 1:00 PM – 1:45 PM
In this session, the attendee will learn how to leverage Ansible to deploy IaaS and PaaS workloads on Microsoft Azure. They will understand the modules that are available to deploy virtual machines, ARM templates, scale sets, and the roadmap for future Ansible on Azure developments and how to contribute to the roadmap using Slack. We will also discuss P2C and V2C migrations using Ansible as the facilitator. Attendees will leave with a number of technical resources to use for their own Microsoft Azure integration. Read more here.

Ansible VS Code Extension

Visual Studio Code is a lightweight, open source, and free (yet powerful) code editor, which runs almost anywhere. When VS Code meets the agility and effectiveness of Ansible, what will happen? Learn more in this session:

Ansible + VSCode: Accelerate Ansible Playbooks
Catherine Zhu and Alfred Sin from Microsoft
Wednesday, Oct 3 1:30PM – 2:15PM
In this session, attendees will learn how to install Ansible extension and easily author new Ansible playbooks with auto-completion, code snippets, syntax highlighting. Also learn how to execute your Ansible playbooks in local, Docker, remote, or cloud environments, including real examples. Read more here.

It is common to write Ansible playbooks in Windows environments, but run them in a Linux Ansible host. We added SSH support in the Ansible VS Code extension to connect to a remote Ansible host, copy whole workspace and changed files to the remote host and execute specified Ansible playbook there.

New demos for the event

We prepared some great live demos for AnsibleFest. Below is a sneak preview of one example, which shows you how to create and configure a virtual maching with Ansible modules, generalize it with Ansible modules for REST API, and then capture it with an Ansible module for images. All coding work happens in my Windows desktop and execution happens in my remote Linux VM on Azure.

Please drop by the Azure Ansible booth, see a demo, or chat with us about how you are integrating Ansible with Azure. We are always looking for feedback and to hear more about your automation requirements.

For more information about the Ansible capabilities on Azure, please visit the Ansible on Azure developer hub.

Kylie Liang

Kylie is Sr. Program Manager within Microsoft's Cloud + Enterprise Group. She focuses on DevOps and open source, including Ansible and Kubernetes, and Java tooling on Microsoft Azure. She has been working with open source communities for several years and is a board director of the FreeBSD Foundation.

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