Rundeck Quicktips

Posted on 299 words | ~2 mins
rundeck devops

At work, I’ve been using Rundeck for a few projects; or rather one of my colleagues introduced Rundeck to us and as new kid on the team, I was suggested to work with it. My assignment was fairly simple; though without prior knowledge on Rundeck, it was a learning curve.

The assignment

Allow a user to select which service(s) to restart/start/stop on various selectable environments. Ensure puppet is also stopped if the selected action is stop.

The solution

Bear in mind that this was my first assignment related to Rundeck.

Requirements

This entire thing hinges on tags; if you don’t have nodes with tags, stop here and go tag your nodes properly.

  • ‘Details’-tab:
    • Enter a Job Name ‘Start/Stop/Restart services on non-production servers’
    • In the textbox next to the Job Name, you can enter an extra folder; I added ‘Non-Production’.
  • ‘Workflow’-tab:
    • Header ‘Options’
      • Click add an Option
        • Option Type : Text
        • Option Name : environment
        • Option Label: Server Environment
        • Description : Select which environment you wish to work with; the correct servers will be selected based on this.
        • Default Value : Leave empty unless you want a default.
        • Input Type : Plain Text
        • Allowed Values : Check ‘List’ and enter the environments EXACTLY as they are added as tags to nodes in Rundeck.
        • Sort Values : Whatever floats your boat here; but note the delimiter as this can make or break your entire setup.
        • Restrictions : Depending on what you want, I would definately go with ‘Enforcred from Allowed Values’ here.
        • Required: Yes
        • Should be hidden: In this case; No.
        • Multi-Valued : For the environments, No, for the services, Yes.
        • Click ‘Save’.
      • Add another Option, this time: - Option Name : services
      • Option Label : Selected Services
      • Option Description : Select which services you which to action.
      • Multi-Valued : Yes.