only recommended for troubleshooting. Sometimes an installer may restart the WinRM or HTTP service and cause this error. upgraded, the Service\AllowUnencrypted can be set to true but this is Some things to check for include: Make sure the firewall is not set to block the configured WinRM listener ports, Ensure that a WinRM listener is enabled on the port and path set by the host vars, Ensure that the winrm service is running on the Windows host and configured for Ansible Collection: community.windows. Without this hotfix installed, To set up an https listener, build a self-signed cert and execute PowerShell commands, just run the script like in the example below (if you’ve got the .ps1 file stored locally on your machine):Note: The win_psexec module will help you enable WinRM on multiple machines if you have lots of Windows hosts to set up in your environment. Check available Windows modules. without any user input. set to true when debugging WinRM messages. Ansible Tower, To configure a kerberos or credssp. then there could be a problem trying to access all the paths specified by the PSModulePath environment variable. Ansible.cfg – This is the main Ansible configuration file; in most cases, there is no need to modify this file. The way this is accomplished involves several techniques such as authentication, authorization, and encryption. If you are using SSH as required. Port: The port the listener runs on, by default it is 5985 for HTTP Keep in mind, however, that even if you’ve followed the instructions above, some Windows modules have additional specifications (e.g., a newer OS or more recent PowerShell version). Until after troubleshooting what was going on I discovered that my pip command was actually the python v3 pip command. Ansible delivers simple IT automation that ends repetitive tasks and frees up DevOps teams for more strategic work. Have a question? The ansible_shell_type variable should reflect the DefaultShell win_copy - Copies files to remote locations on windows hosts. Furthermore, Windows host through which you need to add Ansible Engine should be at least Windows 7 SP1 or latest. This script sets up both HTTP and HTTPS this is empty; a self-signed certificate is generated when the WinRM service a Unix/Linux host. WinRM service on the host. Ansible can manage desktop OSs including To use this script, run the following in PowerShell: There are different switches and parameters (like -EnableCredSSP and newer version will result in the script failing. April 24, 2018 This is a demo' start_sound_path='C:\\windows\\media\\ding.wav' speech_speed=2" Do you want more? Managing Windows Servers with Playbooks. In this blog i try to explain as simple as possible how to communicate with a windows host from Ansible. Your output should look like this:Note: The win_ prefix on all of the Windows modules indicates that they are implemented in PowerShell and not Python. A HTTP 401 error indicates the authentication process failed during the initial Group Policy Objects documentation. listener created and configured. 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019. If it works, the issue may not be related to the WinRM setup; please continue reading for more troubleshooting suggestions. ansible_user and ansible_password. Second, Windows support has been evolving rapidly, so make sure to use the newest possible version of Ansible Engine to get the latest features!For the target hosts, you should be running at least Windows 7 SP1 or later or Windows Server 2008 SP1 or later. If running on Server 2008, then SP2 must be installed. If specified, this is used to match the name or display_name of the Windows service to get the info for. this is changed, the host var ansible_winrm_path must be set to the same The following PowerShell command will install the hotfix: For more details, please refer to the Hotfix document from Microsoft. (Get-Service -Name winrm).Status to get the status of the service. inventory.yml [web] ip of my windows host. Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7, then SP1 must be installed. The third option is to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux to … can be used to set up the basics. hotfixes should be installed as part of the system bootstrapping or The simplest method is to run pip install pywinrm in your Terminal. Ensure that the user is a member of the local Administrators group or has been explicitly The Ansible community hub for sharing automation with everyone. By default in the registry. ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 It’s a feature of Windows Vista and higher that lets administrators run management scripts remotely; it handles those connections by implementing the WS-Management Protocol, based on Simple Object Access Protocol (commonly referred to as SOAP). To get an output of the current service configuration options, run the Step 4: Execute Ansible Playbook in Windows. If powershell fails with an error message similar to The 'Out-String' command was found in the module 'Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility', but the module could not be loaded. and extended support from Microsoft. Compare behavior of these inventories against a windows host: host001 ansible_shell_executable="C:\Windows\system32\calc.exe" ansible_shell_type="powershell" ansible_user="myUsername" ansible_connection="ssh" # should fail, but works as ansible_shell_executable is ignored. winrm quickconfig -transport:https for HTTPS. Since the “Configure Remoting for Ansible” script we ran earlier set things up with the self-signed cert, we need to tell Python, “Don’t try to validate this certificate because it’s not going to be from a valid CA.” So in order to prevent an error, one more thing you need to put into the host vars section is: ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation=ignore Just so you can see it in one place, here is an example host file (please note, some details for your particular environment will be different): Let’s check to see if everything is working. -ForceNewSSLCert) that can be set alongside this script. When working with Windows, this means making sure th… Some examples of WinRM errors that you might see include an HTTP 401 or HTTP 500 error, timeout issues or a connection refusal. and set the execution policy back to the default of Restricted. We use it to manage ~700 windows hosts and ~400 linux hosts. As you know, the first thing is you need to add your new machine in inventory; something like below. to ensure no credentials are still stored on the host. the operations over WinRM and are useful to understand. The best way to figure out if you’re meeting the right requirements is to check the module-specific documentation pages.For more in-depth information on how to use Ansible Engine to automate your Windows hosts, check out our Windows FAQ and Windows Support documentation page and stay tuned for more Windows-related blog posts! Windows, You can use the Upgrade-PowerShell.ps1 script to update these. not set to Strict. granted access (a connection test with the winrs command can be used to Some things This And when you need to roll this out across your team, Red Hat ® Ansible ® Tower works out of the box with Ansible’s Windows support. More details for this can be Ansible requires PowerShell version 3.0 and .NET Framework 4.0 or newer to function on older operating systems like Server 2008 and Windows 7. The file can also be static or created dynamically by a script. found below. ansible_user: root ansible_password: Ansible2! Using SSH with Windows is experimental, the implementation may make © Copyright 2019 Red Hat, Inc. If Ansible uses the … Let us test Ansible to Windows Access. this problems is to either: Remove the UNC path from the PSModulePath environment variable, or, Use an authentication option that supports credential delegation like credssp or kerberos with credential delegation enabled. When you connect to Windows hosts over WinRm, you have a few different options ranging in ease of setup to security implications. capability but currently the version that is installed through this process is Like many other infrastructure components, Ansible can deploy and maintain configuration state across Windows hosts. This plugin is part of the ansible.windows collection (version 1.2.0). To install Win32-OpenSSH for use with and Kerberos are enabled. The community.windows collection includes the community plugins supported by Ansible community to help the management of Windows hosts.. Ansible version compatibility. Here we tell Ansible to use the CredSSP Transport Method to authenticate to our Windows host: ansible_winrm_transport: credssp. To get tips on how to solve these problems, visit the Common WinRM Issues section of our Windows Setup documentation page. This port can be changed to whatever is required and is required and the username and password parameters are set, the The former is quite complex to configure, but there’s not a lot of information around how to set up the latter. Ansible is a great choice for Windows hosts. These usually indicate an error with the network connection where To get the details of the certificate itself, run this development purposes only and should not be used in a In this post, we’ll walk you through all the steps you need to take in order to set up and connect to your Windows hosts with Ansible Engine. The It was easily the best cross platform option for us, and we use for everything from provisioning to true config management (firewall rules, adding hosts to AD, setting up IIS, etc). Leverage powerful automation across entire IT teams no matter where you are in your automation journey. value. This is also known as the double-hop or credential delegation issue. These indicate an error has occurred with the WinRM service. A WinRM listener should be created and activated. With WinRM, you can do cool stuff like access, edit and update data from local and remote computers as a network administrator. To do this, go to your control node’s terminal and type ansible [host_group_name_in_inventory_file] -i hosts -m win_ping. Message level components can be unreliable depending on the version that is installed. These If using Kerberos authentication, ensure that Service\Auth\CbtHardeningLevel is Find out what's happening in global Ansible Meetups and find one near you. web.yml. To modify a setting under the Service key in PowerShell: To modify a setting under the Winrs key in PowerShell: If running in a domain environment, some of these options are set by As per the Ansible documentation, “use this (SSH with Windows) feature at your own risk! When a key has been In order to discuss security issues in relation to Ansible and Windows, we’ll be applying concepts from the popular CIA Triad: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. Do you want to easily automate everyone’s best friend, Clippy? And Ansible was using python v2.7. main components of the WinRM service that governs how Ansible can interface with Service\Auth\*, If running over HTTP and not HTTPS, use ntlm, kerberos or credssp ListeningOn = 10.0.2.15, 127.0.0.1, 192.168.56.155, ::1, fe80::5efe:10.0.2.15%6, fe80::5efe:192.168.56.155%8, fe80: ffff:ffff:fffe%2, fe80::203d:7d97:c2ed:ec78%3, fe80::e8ea:d765:2c69:7756%7, CertificateThumbprint = E6CDAA82EEAF2ECE8546E05DB7F3E01AA47D76CE, $thumbprint = "E6CDAA82EEAF2ECE8546E05DB7F3E01AA47D76CE", Get-ChildItem -Path cert:\LocalMachine\My -Recurse | Where-Object { $_.Thumbprint -eq $thumbprint } | Select-Object *, "E6CDAA82EEAF2ECE8546E05DB7F3E01AA47D76CE", Remove-Item -Path WSMan:\localhost\Listener\* -Recurse -Force, # Only remove listeners that are run over HTTPS, Get-ChildItem -Path WSMan:\localhost\Listener | Where-Object { $_.Keys -contains "Transport=HTTPS" } | Remove-Item -Recurse -Force, RootSDDL = O:NSG:BAD:P(A;;GA;;;BA)(A;;GR;;;IU)S:P(AU;FA;GA;;;WD)(AU;SA;GXGW;;;WD), # substitute {path} with the path to the option after winrm/config/Service, Set-Item -Path WSMan:\localhost\Service\{path} -Value "value here", # for example, to change Service\Auth\CbtHardeningLevel run, Set-Item -Path WSMan:\localhost\Service\Auth\CbtHardeningLevel -Value Strict, # Substitute {path} with the path to the option after winrm/config/Winrs, Set-Item -Path WSMan:\localhost\Shell\{path} -Value "value here", # For example, to change Winrs\MaxShellRunTime run, Set-Item -Path WSMan:\localhost\Shell\MaxShellRunTime -Value 2147483647, winrs -r:http://server:5985/wsman -u:Username -p:Password ipconfig, # Test out HTTPS (will fail if the cert is not verifiable), winrs -r:https://server:5986/wsman -u:Username -p:Password -ssl ipconfig, # Test out HTTPS, ignoring certificate verification, $password = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "Password" -AsPlainText -Force, $cred = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $username, $password, $session_option = New-PSSessionOption -SkipCACheck -SkipCNCheck -SkipRevocationCheck, Invoke-Command -ComputerName server -UseSSL -ScriptBlock { ipconfig } -Credential $cred -SessionOption $session_option, choco install --package-parameters=/SSHServerFeature openssh, # Make sure the role has been downloaded first, ansible-galaxy install jborean93.win_openssh, C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe, # Or revert the settings back to the default, cmd, Understanding privilege escalation: become, Controlling where tasks run: delegation and local actions, Working with language-specific version managers, Discovering variables: facts and magic variables, Validating tasks: check mode and diff mode, Controlling playbook execution: strategies and more, Virtualization and Containerization Guides, Controlling how Ansible behaves: precedence rules. user’s credentials and will fail when attempting to access a network resource. to use when running outside of a domain environment and a simple listener is Since pywinrm dependencies aren’t shipped with Ansible Engine (and these are necessary for using WinRM), make sure you install the pywinrm-related library on the machine that Ansible is installed on. actions are required. run the following command from another Windows host to connect to the You can Last updated on Dec 14, 2020. Bianca Henderson. reboot. WinRsMaxShellsPerUser or any of the other Winrs quotas haven’t been We can’t help with the last thing, but if you said yes to the other two questions, you've come to the right place. authentication on Unix/Linux hosts. Managing Linux hosts with both Ansible Tower/AWX is trivial, but Windows requires extra work. Type: ansible windows -c ipconfig; If this command is successful, the next steps will be to build Ansible playbooks to manage Windows Servers. For Ansible to communicate to a Windows host and use Windows modules, the Ansible will fail to execute certain commands on the Windows host. exceeded. level 2 options are allowed with the WinRM service. Ansible users have written modules for managing filesystem ACLs, managing Windows Firewall, and managing hostname and domain membership, and more. Some of CBT is only used when connecting with NTLM or Kerberos WinRM service to be configured so that Ansible can connect to it. in the connection. Configure the WinRM Listener. Using SSH with Windows is experimental, and we expect to uncover more issues. Tickets available now. Install the openssh package using Chocolatey: Use win_chocolatey to install the service: Use an existing Ansible Galaxy role like jborean93.win_openssh: Win32-OpenSSH is still a beta product and is constantly Are you worried that Red Hat Ansible Engine won’t be able to communicate with your Windows servers without installing a bunch of extra software? In order to connect to your Windows hosts properly, you need to make sure that you put in ansible_connection=winrm in the host vars section of your inventory file so that Ansible Engine doesn’t just keep trying to connect to your Windows host via SSH. Use Ansible to set up a number of tasks that the remote hosts can perform, including creating new files and directories. Getting Started. Winrs\MaxMemoryPerShellMB: This is the maximum amount of memory allocated Some things to check for: Ensure that the WinRM service is up and running on the host. host is a member of a domain because the configuration is done automatically version. Since Windows Server 2012, WinRM has been enabled by default, but in most cases extra configuration is required to use WinRM with Ansible. with ansible_winrm_message_encryption: auto to enable message encryption. required (Strict). Before we start, let’s go over the basic requirements. imaging process. this is 5985 for HTTP and 5986 for HTTPS. a connection option for Windows, it is highly recommend you install the configured on the Windows host. To view the current listeners that are running on the WinRM service, run the authentication. By default, Negotiate (NTLM) What’s WinRM? The documentation This document discusses the setup that is required before Ansible can communicate with a Microsoft Windows host. Ansible hosts running on Linux machines connect to WinRM using the WS-MAN protocol, which can proxy these requests so that even requests coming from Linux machines (your Ansible host) can be successfully answered by the Windows operating system. Synopsis ¶. This is an example of how to run this script from PowerShell: Once completed, you will need to remove auto logon You don’t want to be running something from the 90’s like Windows NT, because this might happen: Lastly, since Ansible connects to Windows machines and runs PowerShell scripts by using Windows Remote Management (WinRM) (as an alternative to SSH for Linux/Unix machines), a WinRM listener should be created and activated. The Keys object is an array of strings, so it can contain different Let’s create some playbooks and test Ansible for real on Windows systems. New-WSManInstance. the key options that are useful to understand are: Transport: Whether the listener is run over HTTP or HTTPS, it is For Ansible to communicate to a Windows host and use Windows modules, the Windows host must meet these requirements: Ansible can generally manage Windows versions under current and extended support from Microsoft. I ran into several issues while trying to use the Kerberos/CredSSP … ansible_port: 5986 ansible_connection: winrm ansible_winrm_cert_validation: ignore. script will automatically reboot and logon when it comes back up from the The server side modules have additional requirements, such as a newer OS or PowerShell To use it in a playbook, specify: ansible.windows.win_copy. A few of the many things you can do for your Windows hosts with Ansible Engine include: Starting, stopping and managing services Pushing and executing custom PowerShell scripts Managing packages with the Chocolatey package manager Make sure the cleanup commands are run after the script finishes to check for include: Verify that the number of current open shells has not exceeded either ansible windows -i hosts -m win_say -a "msg='Hi! For this, WinRM listener should be created and activated. the Windows host: the listener and the service configuration settings. ansible_host. Make sure that the authentication option set by ansible_winrm_transport is enabled under Ansible can manage desktop OSs including Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, and server OSs including Windows Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019. @nirmalam99 I was affected by this as well, and like you, I was sure I was running the latest requests-credssp and pyOpenSSL. Ansible, Ansible can help you with configuration management, application deployment and task automation. Installing Ansible¶ This page describes how to install Ansible on different platforms. win_domain_controller - Manage domain controller/member server state for a Windows host This collection has been tested against following Ansible versions: >=2.10. Ansible is open source and created by contributions from an active open source community. The base image does not meet this This is the easiest option The username and password parameters are stored in plain text Each of these ports must have a This is the best way to create a listener when the because of the double hop/credential delegation issue the Ansible process cannot access these folders. Ansible is the only automation language that can be used across entire IT teams from systems and network administrators to developers and managers. by backwards incompatible changes in feature releases. Here are the known ones: Win32-OpenSSH versions older than v7.9.0.0p1-Beta do not work when powershell is the shell type, While SCP should work, SFTP is the recommended SSH file transfer mechanism to use when copying or fetching a file, Windows specific module list, all implemented in PowerShell. requests-kerberos, and/or requests-credssp are up to date using pip. If you prefer using the terminal, you can add a host called windows in your “/etc/ansible/hosts” file then execute the command below to test if everything works well. Once Powershell has been upgraded to at least version 3.0, the final step is for the If you click the link for the host on this page, you can view the host specific variables that have been defined. While these are the base requirements for Ansible connectivity, some Ansible See KB4076842 for more information on this problem. created and stored in the LocalMachine\My certificate store. Use Check that the host firewall is allowing traffic over the WinRM port. Pushing and executing custom PowerShell scripts, Managing packages with the Chocolatey package manager. Ansible is powerful IT automation that you can learn quickly. The configuration of a WinRM listener has two main pieces to … When using Basic or Certificate authentication, make sure that the user is a local account and any further changes required. There are two Ansible is unable to reach the host. You should now be ready to automate your Windows hosts using Ansible, without the need to install a ton of additional software! corresponds to the host var ansible_port. Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, and server OSs including Windows Server 2008, do this with the following PowerShell commands: The script works by checking to see what programs need to be installed I have installed Ansible on a CentOS linux and created 2 files namely web.yml and inventory.yml. opening up the Firewall for the ports required and starts the WinRM service. Ansible connects to these Windows hosts over WinRM, although they’re experimenting with SSH. One easy way to determine whether a problem is a host issue is to Ansible is a very powerful and simple open source automation platform. Using Group Policy Objects. (such as .NET Framework 4.5.2) and what PowerShell version is required. Stop by the google group! From the root folder of the cloned Ansible-Windows repo, SSH into the Ansible … These usually indicate an error when trying to communicate with the For Ansible to automate a Linux Server, Network device or Cloud server it has to exist within the inventory (also known as the Ansible hosts file) and saved in either YAML or INI format. Using PowerShell to create the listener with a specific configuration. Master Ansible in lab-intensive, real-world training with any of our Ansible focused courses. As AWX was installed using Docker, the Ansible files need copying into the default Project folder location /var/lib/awx/projects, so the hosts Inventory file can be imported from inside the awx_task container. Ansible connects to Windows machines and runs PowerShell scripts by using Windows Remote Management (WinRM) (as an alternative to SSH for Linux/Unix machines). For more information on group policy objects, see the Enabling Ubuntu on Windows 10. installed on the Windows host. Because WinRM can be configured in so many different ways, errors that seem Ansible Engine-related can actually be due to problems with host setup instead. Ansible, select one of these three installation options: Manually install the service, following the install instructions URLPrefix: The URL prefix to listen on, by default it is wsman. authentication option on the service. When creating an HTTPS listener, an existing certificate needs to be listeners with a self-signed certificate and enables the Basic which correspond to the values from winrm enumerate winrm/config/Listeners. thumbprint of the certificate in the Windows Certificate Store that is used Details about each component can be read below, but the script Ansible … Service\CertificateThumbprint: This is the thumbprint of the certificate per shell, including the shell’s child processes. When running on PowerShell v3.0, there is a bug with the WinRM service that You can configure inventory to be static or dynamic; in this tutorial, we will be configuring static inventory. It’s basically like a translator that allows different types of operating systems to work together. target Windows host: If this fails, the issue is probably related to the WinRM setup. Welcome to the first installment of our Windows-specific Getting Started series!Would you like to automate some of your Windows hosts with Red Hat Ansible Tower, but don’t know how to set everything up? Microsoft offers a way to install Win32-OpenSSH through a Windows Readiness of Linux server side. If the username and When using SSH key authentication with Ansible, the remote session won’t have access to the two ways to work around this issue: Use plaintext password auth by setting ansible_password, Use become on the task with the credentials of the user that needs access to the remote resource. Unlike the other options, this process also has the added benefit of Ensure the downstream packages pywinrm, requests-ntlm, Confidentiality is pretty self-evident — protecting confidentiality helps restrict private data to only authorized users and helps to prevent non-authorized ones from seeing it. not verified (None), verified but not required (Relaxed), or verified and could in fact be issues with the host setup instead.