Smelly variables in ansible infrastructure code
Ruben Opdebeeck, Ahmed Zerouali, Coen De Roover
Abstract
Infrastructure as Code is the practice of automating the provisioning, configuration, and orchestration of network nodes using code in which variable values such as configuration parameters, node hostnames, etc. play a central role. Mistakes in these values are an important cause of infrastructure defects and corresponding outages. Ansible, a popular IaC language, nonetheless features semantics which can cause confusion about the value of variables.
Topics & Concepts
Computer scienceCode (set theory)ProvisioningOrchestrationSemantics (computer science)Node (physics)ConfusionVariable (mathematics)Value (mathematics)Programming languageComputer networkEngineeringMathematicsSet (abstract data type)MusicalArtVisual artsMathematical analysisStructural engineeringMachine learningPsychoanalysisPsychologyDistributed systems and fault toleranceSoftware System Performance and ReliabilitySecurity and Verification in Computing