The OpenShift Ansible broker (OAB) is an implementation of the Open Service Broker (OSB) API that manages applications defined by Ansible playbook bundles (APBs). APBs provide a new method for defining and distributing container applications in OpenShift Container Platform, consisting of a bundle of Ansible playbooks built into a container image with an Ansible runtime. APBs leverage Ansible to create a standard mechanism for automating complex deployments.
The design of the OAB follows this basic workflow:
A user requests list of available applications from the service catalog using the OpenShift Container Platform web console.
The service catalog requests the OAB for available applications.
The OAB communicates with a defined container registry to learn which APBs are available.
The user issues a request to provision a specific APB.
The provision request makes its way to the OAB, which fulfills the user’s request by invoking the provision method on the APB.
An Ansible playbook bundle (APB) is a lightweight application definition that allows you to leverage existing investment in Ansible roles and playbooks.
APBs use a simple directory with named playbooks to perform OSB API actions, such as provision and bind. Metadata defined in apb.yml spec file contains a list of required and optional parameters for use during deployment.
See the APB Development Guide for details on the overall design and how APBs are written.