Mark III Systems Blog

Summary:

This article demonstrates a way to auto download and install the MID server files from ServiceNow using Ansible on the localhost. This allows you to leverage Ansible easily by passing ServiceNow workflows to Ansible which is already installed on the MID server.

Although this solution installs the MID server local, the role from ServiceNow we'll be using here will allow remote MID server installs using this role from the controller (not tested by me, but looks right). It is even configured to allow MID server installs for Windows as long as you have your Ansible inventory and vars configured properly and you point the main playbook to your inventory hosts or groups.

Goal:

Install and configure a ServiceNow MID server using Ansible so we can leverage the Ansible controller in ServiceNow workflows.

Resources:

• CentOS 7.7
• Ansible 2.9
• ServiceNow Role (ansible-role-mid)
• Git 1.8.3.1

Solution:

This solution assumes you have Ansible 2.9 and git already installed.

We will be using a role provided at ServiceNowITOM GitHub

1- Log into your Ansible Controller

2- Make a new directory to house the role files

mkdir mid-install
cd mid-install

3- Clone the role from ServiceNow github

git clone https://github.com/ServiceNowITOM/ansible-role-mid.git

4- Edit the vars file and specify the required vars

vim ansible-role-mid/vars/main.yml

5- Add the required content (replace YOUR.. with your required details)

# vars file for ansible-role-mid
#
now_instance: YOURINSTANCE.FQDN.COM
now_instance_username: YOURINSTANCEUSER
now_instance_password: YOURINSTANCEUSERPASS

6- Use Ansible Vault to Encrypt the vars file if required

ansible-vault encrypt ansible-role-mid/vars/main.yml

7- Create a playbook to execute the role

vim pb.mid-install.yaml

Enter the contents as shown for localhost install

---
- name: Main playbook for mid role install
  hosts: localhost
  roles:
    -  ansible-role-mid

8- Check the playbook syntax

sudo ansible-playbook pb.mid-install.yaml --syntax-check --ask-vault-pass

or.. if your didn't encrypt

sudo ansible-playbook pb.mid-install.yaml --syntax-check

9 - Run the playbook

sudo ansible-playbook pb.mid-install.yaml --ask-vault-pass

10 - Verify the MID server is registered in SNOW

11- Validate

 

That's it basically..  some additional configuration may be required based on your desired state.

I just upgraded to Orlando and deployed the MID server with the Orlando bits. Additional MID Server configuration detail information from ServiceNow can be found here.

Configure MID Orlando

Enjoy!