Procedure

1. Install the rhel-system-roles package on the system that you want to use as a control node:

   # yum install rhel-system-roles

   If you do not have a Red Hat Ansible Engine Subscription, you can use a limited supported version of Red Hat Ansible Engine provided with your Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. In this case, follow these steps:

   1. Enable the RHEL Ansible Engine repository:

      # subscription-manager refresh
      
      # subscription-manager repos --enable ansible-2-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms

   2. Install Ansible Engine:

      # yum install ansible

Procedure

1. Create an Ansible playbook including the required role.

   The following example shows how to use roles through the roles: option for a given play:

   ---
   - hosts: webservers
     roles:
        - rhel-system-roles.network
        - rhel-system-roles.timesync

   For more information on using roles in playbooks, see Ansible documentation.

   See Ansible examples for example playbooks.

   Note

   Every role includes a README file, which documents how to use the role and supported parameter values. You can also find an example playbook for a particular role under the documentation directory of the role. Such documentation directory is provided by default with the rhel-system-roles package, and can be found in the following location:

   /usr/share/doc/rhel-system-roles/SUBSYSTEM/

   Replace SUBSYSTEM with the name of the required role, such as selinux, kdump, network, timesync, or storage.

2. Verify the playbook syntax:

   # ansible-playbook --syntax-check name.of.the.playbook

   The ansible-playbook command offers a --syntax-check option that you can use to verify the syntax of a playbook.

3. Execute the playbook on targeted hosts by running the ansible-playbook command:

   # ansible-playbook -i name.of.the.inventory name.of.the.playbook

   An inventory is a list of systems against which Ansible works. For more information on how to create and inventory, and how to work with it, see Ansible documentation.

   If you do not have an inventory, you can create it at the time of running ansible-playbook:

   If you have only one targeted host against which you want to run the playbook, use:

   # ansible-playbook -i host1, name.of.the.playbook

   If you have multiple targeted hosts against which you want to run the playbook, use:

   # ansible-playbook -i host1,host2,....,hostn name.of.the.playbook

Procedure

1. Configure localhost in the the /etc/ansible/hosts Ansible inventory by adding the following content to the inventory:

   localhost ansible_connection=local

2. Create an Ansible playbook with the following content:

   ---
   - hosts: localhost
     vars:
       metrics_graph_service: yes
     roles:
       - rhel-system-roles.metrics

3. Run the Ansible playbook:

   # ansible-playbook name_of_your_playbook.yml

   Note

   Since the metrics_graph_service boolean is set to value="yes", grafana is automatically installed and provisioned with pcp added as a data source.

4. To view visualization of the metrics being collected on your machine, access the grafana web interface as described in Accessing the Grafana web UI.

Procedure

1. Add the name or IP of the machines you wish to monitor via the playbook to the /etc/ansible/hosts Ansible inventory file under an identifying group name enclosed in brackets:

   [remotes]
   webserver.example.com
   database.example.com

2. Create an Ansible playbook with the following content:

   ---
   - hosts: remotes
     vars:
       metrics_retention_days: 0
     roles:
       - rhel-system-roles.metrics

3. Run the Ansible playbook:

   # ansible-playbook name_of_your_playbook.yml

Procedure

1. Create an Ansible playbook with the following content:

   ---
   - hosts: localhost
     vars:
       metrics_graph_service: yes
       metrics_query_service: yes
       metrics_retention_days: 10
       metrics_monitored_hosts: ["database.example.com", "webserver.example.com"]
     roles:
       - rhel-system-roles.metrics

2. Run the Ansible playbook:

   # ansible-playbook name_of_your_playbook.yml

   Note

   Since the metrics_graph_service and metrics_query_service booleans are set to value="yes", grafana is automatically installed and provisioned with pcp added as a data source with the pcp data recording indexed into redis, allowing the pcp querying language to be used for complex querying of the data.

3. To view graphical representation of the metrics being collected centrally by your machine and to query the data, access the grafana web interface as described in Accessing the Grafana web UI.