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Ansible + ServiceNow - Closed Loop Incident Management

For a short video overview of this demonstration please refer to this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/TkXRj4w2G2Y

Objective

Demonstrate a closed loop incident management scenario.

  1. Check devices for compliance. When a device does not meet compliance requirements, a ServiceNow ticket with relevant information will be created.
  2. The ticketing system has business logic to automatically fix bespoke incidents - in this case, a device that is out of compliance should be brought into compliance. ServiceNow will call out to Tower to use automation and fix the incident.
  3. The Ansible Tower automation job will bring the device into compliance and then reach out to ServiceNow to resolve and close out the ticket

Thus a BSS (Business Services System) is able to maintain a statement of record while automatically fixing incidents at the same time.

Table of Contents

Step 1 - Connect to workbench

Connect to the workshop workbench:

[user@RHEL ~]$ ssh student1@student1.workshop.rhdemo.io
student1@student1.workshop.rhdemo.io's password:

Move into the demos/servicenow/1-config-drift directory.

[student1@ansible ~]$
[student1@ansible ~]$ cd ~/demos/servicenow/2-closed_loop_incident_mgmt

Step 2 - Provide ServiceNow credentials

Define the login information (username, password and instance) as defined in the Common Setup. Fill this information out in login_info.yml with your text editor of choice.

[student1@ansible ~]$ nano login_info.yml

Step 3 - Run demo setup playbook

Run the demo_setup.yml playbook as follows. This will create the necessary job templates for the demo in your tower instance:

[student1@ansible closed_loop_incident_mgmt]$ ansible-playbook demo_setup.yml

After this step, log into your tower instance and verify that the 2 “SNOW” job templates are present:

screenshot of Job Templates in Red Hat Ansible Tower: relevant job template picture

Step 4 - The named URL

Extremely important: Make sure you use FQDNs that have valid SSL certs for the demo to work

The Ansible Tower API has the concept of a named URL (named_url). The named URL feature allows you to access Tower resources via resource-specific human-readable identifiers. More info can be found in the documentation at: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-tower/latest/html/towerapi/access_resources.html

The URL for the SNOW-Demo-Compliance-Fix will be:

$TOWER_URL/api/v2/job_templates/SNOW-Demo-Compliance-Fix/launch

for example:

https://student1.sean_workshop.rhdemo.io/api/v2/job_templates/SNOW-Demo-Compliance-Fix/launch

Step 5 - Setup ServiceNow REST Message

    {"extra_vars": {
   "incident_num": "${INC}" } }

screenshot of servicenow

The extra_vars is how the ServiceNow API is going to pass the incident number information to the Ansible Tower instance

Step 6 - Setup ServiceNow Business Rule

(function executeRule(current, previous /*null when async*/ ) {

    try {
        var r = new sn_ws.RESTMessageV2('Ansible Tower Demo', 'Launch compliance fix');
        r.setStringParameterNoEscape('INC', current.number);

        var response = r.execute();
        var responseBody = response.getBody();
        var httpStatus = response.getStatusCode();
        current.comments = "Contacting Ansible Tower to fix bespoke incident";
        current.state = '2';
        current.update();
    } catch (ex) {
        var message = ex.message;
    }

})(current, previous);

It should look similar to this screenshot:

Running the Demo

Reminder, for a short video overview of this demonstration please refer to this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/TkXRj4w2G2Y

Step 1

Ensure that the router does not have a current banner (required condition for the device to be out of compliance:

[student1@ansible]$ ssh rtr1


rtr1#

If there is an existing banner you can use the no banner login command in config mode to remove it

Step 2

Log into the Tower instance and launch the SNOW-Demo-Compliance-Check Job Template

Observe the following 2 tasks as that template runs

TASK [CREATE AN INCIDENT] ******************************************************
changed: [rtr1 -> localhost]

TASK [VISUAL OUTPUT OF INCIDENT NUMBER] ****************************************
ok: [rtr1] => {
    "snow_var.record.number": "INC0010034"
}

Step 3

Switch over to the ServiceNow instance and see that the ticket number as see in the previous output has been created.

Step 4

Switch back to the Ansible Tower Jobs and click on the SNOW-Demo-Compliance-Fix Job

Observe that the job will fix the issue on the router, resolve and close out the ticket

TASK [CONFIGURE THE LOGIN BANNER] **********************************************
changed: [rtr1]
TASK [MARK THE TICKET AS RESOLVED] *********************************************
changed: [rtr1]
TASK [MARK THE TICKET AS CLOSED] ***********************************************
changed: [rtr1]

Step 5

[student1@ansible]$ ssh rtr1

DEMO BANNER FOR DEVICE rtr1


rtr1#

Step 6

Red Hat Ansible Automation