Ascender patch quick start
Greg Sowell shows the fastest route from a fresh Ascender install to a patched Rocky Linux host, adding only the pieces that are strictly required. He starts with the default inventory, adds a host using the ansible_host variable because the name is not resolvable in his lab, and notes that dynamic inventory scripts could instead build the host list from a cloud provider or a CMDB such as ServiceNow.
Next comes a machine credential, the type used to log into most server and network infrastructure, filled in here with a simple username and password though SSH keys or certificates work too. An existing job template called Patch Enterprise Linux is launched from the rocket icon, prompting for the credential and presenting a survey, a multiple-choice form that collects input from the user and passes it into the playbook as extra variables.
The second half turns the manual run into a hands-off process. Sowell copies the template, removes the credential prompt, pastes in the survey defaults as variables, disables the survey, and adds a schedule so every host in the inventory is patched every Sunday at 1 a.m.
Key takeaways
- The ansible_host magic variable tells Ascender to connect to a specific IP when a hostname is not fully qualified or resolvable.
- Machine credentials handle logins for most server and network hosts and accept passwords, SSH private keys or certificates.
- Surveys prompt users for information at launch with text, number or multiple-choice fields, passed to the playbook as extra variables.
- Copying a job template, fixing its credential and variables, and disabling the survey turns an interactive run into a schedulable one.
- A schedule set to repeat weekly on Sunday at 1 a.m. patches every host in the inventory without manual intervention.
Questions this video answers
How do you schedule automatic patching in Ascender?
Open the job template, uncheck prompt-on-launch for credentials and pick a fixed credential, enable prompt-on-launch for variables and paste in the values, then go to Schedules, click Add, set a start date and time, and choose a weekly repeat. Every host in the template's inventory is then patched on that cadence.
What is a survey in Ascender?
A survey is a form attached to a job template that prompts the user for extra information at launch. It supports text boxes, numbers, and multiple-choice single or multi-select options, and the answers are stored in variables and passed to the playbook as extra vars. Surveys are easy to create, edit and reorder.
This video is part of the Ascender Pro playlist. Browse every CIQ video by product and topic.
Transcript
hey everybody I'm Greg Sowell and I'm back with another ciq demo today I'm going to be doing a quick start guide that's going to take a rocky host add all the pieces into a cinder that are just absolutely required the only the required pieces and we're going to get it patched right so as fast as possible let's jump in let's see what we uh what we can do here for Speed records so I'm going to start at the start I'm going to go into inventories and an inventory is just a big list of all the hosts I could potentially operate against so I could
add a new one but I'm just going to be using the default one so that I can go as fast as humanly possible so I went into the host Tab and now I'm adding a host if that was a fully qualified domain name in my environment then when anible is trying to connect to that host it'll resolve it and be able to connect in my environment it doesn't happen to be fully qualified so I will use a magic variable called anable host and what this basically tells it is if this variable exists then just use this instead of trying to resolve right so it'll connect
right to that IP address so in theory I would have a bunch of hosts in this environment um you know that it going it's going to patch or theoretically it could be using a uh Dynamic inventory script is what we call them where it'll reach out to a source like your cloud provider or cmdb like in service now or something like that and it'll dynamically build out that list of hosts so we've got something to operate against now how do we log into that device and that is done via machine credential I will call this lab root and for credential here I'm looking for machine
and so machine is what you're going to log into most of your server infrastructure or networking stuff it's really just choose machine fill in the blank I could be putting in my SSH private key here or certificate really all this stuff is just fill in the blank for me just doing a simple username password for this lab demo I click save my credentials in there and ready to use now I'm going to go into job templates this is where you kind of bring all those constituent pieces together and fire off a piece of automation here I've already got one called Enterprise Linux or rather patch
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Enterprise Linux I'm going to click the little rocket ship over here next to it and it's going to prompt me for uh what credential dra I want to use so the lab rout one next it's got a survey and a survey is really just like this really conven vent way where you can prompt the user for additional information so here you see we're doing multiple choice single select but you could do fill in a text box look for numbers uh multiple choice multiple select right there's a lot of options to really easily collect information from users it'll pull that information stick it into a variable
and pass it in your playbook is extra bars so here I can click next and if I click launch it will manually go out and uh update all the hosts uh that happen to be in that inventory right patch all those hosts but for me I don't want this to be a manual process right I I could call it from the API uh from some other tool or something like that but what I want to do is I want to schedule something to just happen so instead of launching that I'm going to hit cancel and I will make a copy right here right next to
the patch Enterprise Linux I'll hit the copy button wait a second and it pulls it up I'm going to hit the pencil to go straight into edit and let's make some modifications and I will say on schedule right change the name a little bit there so credentials we were prompting before I'm going to uncheck prompt on launch right and that's why it popped up and asked me what I wanted to use so instead I will look for a new one I'm going to do lab root that's what I'm going to specify in there next since I'm going to be scheduling it and I'm using some
variables I have to click prompt on launch for that and then I'm going to paste in these variables and really these are just using the defaults that I got from the survey and I just went through the survey items look looked at them and determined what uh the uh variable name was for them and I put them right in here so very simple and honestly I'm done I click save and if I want to here let me show you this is what the survey looks like I'm going to go ahead and disable the survey because we're not going to be using it anymore but if
I wanted to I could pop in here into the individual survey item I could see what the variable was I can see all the options what was set as default these are really super simple I mean they're just as easy to create them and then also edit the order I can move them around if I want to but we want to schedule this to run at an interval so I'm going to click on schedules I will click add and I will say um run patch Sundays 1 a.m. pretty straightforward I'm going to pick when I actually start I'm going to pick this Sunday and I will change the time to you guessed it 1:00 a.m.
run I'm going to say every week starting on Sunday save Bob's your uncle we're done so now all of my systems in this inventory right because I'm specifying that inventory The Playbook actually pulls everything in there will now patch every Sunday at 1:00 a.m. so we looked at doing it manually via surveys and now we looked at scheduling it and it was really that fast if you have any questions or comments we'd love to hear about it if you can think of anything you would love to have pre-baked in here Playbook wise or anything else please reach out to us uh if nothing else happy
uh ascending happy patching and we'll see you next time
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