IBM Z HMC collection

The IBM Z HMC collection provides Ansible modules that can manage platform resources on IBM Z and LinuxONE machines.

The goal of this collection is to be able to utilize the power and ease of use of Ansible for the management of IBM Z platform resources.

The IBM Z platform resources that can be managed include for example partitions, I/O adapters, the Z system itself, or various resources on its Hardware Management Console (HMC).

The Ansible modules in this collection are fully idempotent, following an important principle for Ansible modules. The idempotency of a module allows Ansible playbooks to specify the desired end state for a resource, regardless of what the current state is. For example, an IBM Z partition can be specified to have state=active which means that it must exist and be in the active operational status. Depending on the current state of the partition, actions will be taken by the module to reach this desired end state: If the partition does not exist, it will be created and started. If it exists but is not active, it will be started. If it is already active, nothing will be done. Other initial states including transitional states such as starting or stopping also will be taken care of. The idempotency of modules makes Ansible playbooks restartable: If an error happens and some things have been changed already, the playbook can simply be re-run and will automatically do the right thing, because the initial state does not matter for reaching the desired end state.

The Ansible modules in this collection are written in Python and interact with the Web Services API of the Hardware Management Console (HMC) of the Z machines to be managed.

Note: Before version 0.9.0, the Ansible modules in this collection have been distributed as the zhmc-ansible-modules package on Pypi. Starting with version 0.9.0, the Ansible modules are no longer distributed on Pypi, but as the ibm.ibm_zhmc collection on Ansible Galaxy. Starting with version 1.0.0, the Ansible modules are additionally distributed as the ibm.ibm_zhmc collection on Ansible AutomationHub.

Features

The IBM Z HMC collection includes Modules to automate the management of IBM Z platform resources. There are Sample Playbooks that show how to invoke these modules in playbook tasks.

References

Community Guides

License

This collection is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.

Author Information

The IBM Z HMC collection is maintained by the IBM Z development team.

Reporting issues

If you encounter any problem with this collection, or if you have questions of any kind related to this collection (even when they are not about a problem), please open an issue in the issue tracker.