Automate Agent installation with the Datadog Ansible collection

Ansible is a configuration management tool that helps you automatically deploy, manage, and configure software on your hosts. By turning manual workflows into automated processes, you can quicken your deployment lifecycle and ensure that all hosts are equipped with the proper configurations and tools.

The Datadog collection is now available in both Ansible Galaxy and Ansible Automation Hub . After installing the collection, you’ll gain access to all of the latest features and tools we’ve developed to enhance your automation workflow. This includes the Datadog Ansible role, which can be used to automatically install and configure the Datadog Agent and its integrations across your infrastructure.

In this post, we’ll provide a brief introduction to how Ansible works and the benefits of the Datadog collection . We’ll also walk through an example of using Datadog’s Ansible collection to install the Agent onto managed hosts .

How Ansible works

Ansible is installed onto a single host (known as the control node) used to remotely manage your target group of managed hosts via SSH and other transport protocols. This automation tooling is split into two major components: inventories and playbooks . Inventories are groups of managed hosts that Ansible will deploy and configure. On the other hand, playbooks are automation blueprints for tasks that can be used to deploy and configure any inventory.

You likely won’t need to develop all of your playbook content from scratch—there is plenty of open source content developed by Ansible partners and the community to help you jump-start your automation. Blueprints for tasks such as deploying the Datadog Agent can be installed as Ansible roles , which you can then apply within your playbook using a single line of code. You can install roles and other related playbooks, modules, and plugins as part of a collection , Ansible’s distribution format that groups content from a single creator.

You can browse a comprehensive list of collections within Ansible Galaxy , an open source repository for all community-developed content, or Ansible Automation Hub , which provides certified content for enterprise customers.

By installing Datadog’s Ansible collection, you’ll gain access to new automation content such as modules, plug-ins, and roles as soon as we ship them. Our collection is Red-Hat certified—this means everything we release will be ready for use in your production environments and fully supported by both Red Hat and Datadog. And if you install Datadog’s certified collection through the Ansible Automation Hub, you can reach out to Red Hat’s support team if you need any help. We’ll continue to release new updates to the role and maintain functional parity with the collection for an extended period of time to help support an easy migration to the collection. We also plan to release enhanced workflows for customers who choose to install the collection. As we release new content, you’ll be able to implement additional features directly in your playbooks and environments that allow you to manage and configure the Datadog Agent more efficiently.

Installing the Agent using the Datadog collection

In this section, we’ll walk through how to use Datadog’s Ansible collection to automatically deploy the Agent. To get started, make sure you’re running an up-to-date version of Ansible on your control node. You’ll then need to install the datadog.dd collection using Automation Hub or using the following Ansible Galaxy CLI script: