OVE Appliance Demo Environment

Ansible automation to provision an OVE (OpenShift Virtualization Engine) demo environment: networking, bastion VM, and bare-metal-emulated OVE nodes. Supports two infrastructure backends controlled by infra_backend in inventory:

• openstack (default) — Provisions on an OpenStack cloud (project, Neutron networking, Nova VMs)
• libvirt — Provisions on a single RHEL KVM host using libvirt and Open vSwitch for VLAN trunking

Install Methods

Two install methods are controlled by install_method in inventory (work with both backends):

• ove (default) — Agent ISO boot: blank root volume + USB volume from agent ISO, UEFI intervention required
• appliance — Factory disk image: pre-built appliance.raw from openshift-appliance container, direct boot, no UEFI intervention required

See docs/infra-providers.md for detailed backend-specific documentation.

Prerequisites

• Python 3 with venv
• OpenStack backend: A clouds.yaml with credentials that can create projects and users
• libvirt backend: A RHEL KVM host with root SSH access, sufficient CPU/RAM/disk for bastion + OVE nodes

Setup

# Create and activate a virtual environment
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

# Install Python dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Install Ansible collections
ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml

Configuration

cp inventory/group_vars/all.yml.sample inventory/group_vars/all.yml

Edit inventory/group_vars/all.yml and fill in all fields marked # Must be set by operator:

Common variables:

Variable	Description
infra_backend	"openstack" or "libvirt"
rh_subscription_org	Red Hat subscription org ID
rh_subscription_activation_key	Red Hat activation key
pull_secret	(appliance mode only) Pull secret from console.redhat.com

OpenStack backend:

Variable	Description
cloud_name	Cloud name from your clouds.yaml
ssh_key_name	OpenStack keypair name for bastion access
os_auth_url	OpenStack identity endpoint (e.g. https://identity.example.com:5000/v3)
os_region	OpenStack region name

libvirt backend:

Variable	Description
kvm_host	IP or hostname of the KVM host
bastion_qcow2_image	Path to RHEL 9.x qcow2 image on the KVM host
ssh_public_key	SSH public key content for bastion cloud-init injection

The .ove-demo-cache/lab-{lab_id}/ directory holds per-lab generated secrets (project suffix, sushy password, app credential) and is gitignored. Delete a lab's cache subdirectory to reset that lab's project identity.

Usage

Always activate the venv first:

source .venv/bin/activate

Single Lab

ansible-playbook site.yml              # Full build (idempotent)
ansible-playbook teardown.yml          # Destroy everything including project
ansible-playbook reset-ove-nodes.yml   # Reset nodes (OVE: blank root; appliance: re-factory)

Use tags for selective execution:

ansible-playbook site.yml --tags nodes          # Only create OVE nodes
ansible-playbook site.yml --tags bastion,nodes   # Skip infra, configure bastion + nodes
ansible-playbook site.yml --list-tags            # Show all available tags

Available tags: infra, networking, bastion, nodes, appliance, sushy, openstack, libvirt.

For appliance mode, set install_method: "appliance" in all.yml. The appliance image is built on the bastion during site.yml (Play 3). To rebuild it separately:

ansible-playbook build-appliance-image.yml

Multiple Labs

Each lab is defined by a YAML file in labs/ that sets lab_id, infra_backend, install_method, and any per-lab overrides (see labs/*.yml.sample for examples).

TUI (interactive dashboard):

./lab-manager-tui.sh

The TUI shows a live status table of all labs with current phase, progress, and task counters. Use arrow keys to select a lab, then press d to deploy, t to teardown, r to reset, or x to cancel a running action. The bottom panel streams the selected lab's Ansible log in real time (Enter to switch to highlighted lab, l to cycle). The TUI can attach to labs already running from the CLI.

CLI (headless):

# Deploy specific labs in parallel
./lab-manager-cli.sh deploy labs/openstack-appliance.yml labs/libvirt-ove.yml

# Teardown a single lab
./lab-manager-cli.sh teardown labs/libvirt-appliance.yml

# Deploy/teardown/reset all labs in labs/
./lab-manager-cli.sh deploy-all
./lab-manager-cli.sh teardown-all
./lab-manager-cli.sh reset-all

Each lab runs as a background process. Logs are written to logs/YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS/<lab-name>.log and a summary is printed when all labs finish. Both the CLI and TUI write structured state to .ove-demo-cache/tui/, so you can start labs from the CLI and attach the TUI later to monitor progress.

The lab_id variable (integer 0--55) isolates each lab's resources: credential cache, network address space, sushy port, and (for libvirt) OVS bridges, NAT networks, dnsmasq/sushy services, and MAC addresses. See docs/infra-providers.md for details.