constructs

Job Submit Response Parsing and Constructs

This sample focuses on processing the result of a z/OS® job submission response using a number of Ansible® constructs such as when, with_sequence, loop, set_fact, debug, tags, etc, all available as part of the Ansible engine.

Because this sample is aimed at helping users become familiar with the various Ansible constructs, it includes a response from a submitted job in both JSON and YAML format (both equally the same) such that you can develop against the JSON/YAML responses to avoid having to submit a job for every playbook edit. Optionally the playbook can be run in production mode where the playbook will need to connect to an actual z/OS host (hosts) and the playbook task zos_job_submit must have JCL it can submit.

Although playbooks are written to operate without the need for the user’s configuration, flexibility is written into the samples because it can't always be determined if a sample has access to the host’s resources. Review the playbook for additional details and configuration.

Important

The release of ibm_zos_core collection version 1.10.0 introduced case-sensitive changes to modules, specifically that module choices must be lower case. See the porting guide in the release notes (here) to understand the full scope of these changes.

These changes are not compatible with earlier versions of the ibm_zos_core collection, and since the earlier versions do not reach their end of life until April 2025, the sample playbook compatible with the older versions will remain available.

To support both the latest and prior versions of the collection:

• The main branch will reflect playbooks compatible with ibm_zos_core version 1.10.0 or later.
  • Find this playbook on the main branch: here.
• The ibm_zos_core-v1.9.x-samples branch will reflect playbooks compatible with ibm_zos_core version 1.9.x or earlier.
  • Find this playbook on the ibm_zos_core-v1.9.x-samples branch: here.

The ibm_zos_core-v1.9.x-samples branch will remain available until April 2025 but will not receive updates.

Playbook Requirements

• IBM® z/OS® core collection 1.0.0 or later
• Ansible® 2.11 or later
• jmespath
  • pip install jmespath

Configuration

• Configure the included inventory.yml with the information from the managed z/OS host.
  • Review inventory documentation
• Configure the included host_vars zos_host.yml with the information from your z/OS system.
  • Review host_vars documentation and any additional noted variables in the configuration.

Run desired playbook with the supported Ansible --tags

This project has included a site.yml playbook that serves as the primary playbook that provides additional prerequisite checks then it invokes the zos_job_submit_ansible_constructs.yml playbook.

If you want to run the primary playbook site.yml it will check that your environment has the correct version of Ansible as well as the collection needed to execute correctly. To run the primary playbook, use command:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml site.yml

You can skip the prerequisite check and run the zos_job_submit_ansible_constructs.yml with command:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml zos_job_submit_ansible_constructs.yml

Additional ways to run this playbook using --tags listed below control how the playbook is executed.

Usage:
 ansible-playbook -i <inventory> <playbook> --tags "....."

  1) Run in development mode using JSON cached input
        ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml zos_job_submit_ansible_constructs.yml --tags "mode_development_json"
  2) Run in development mode using YAML cached input
        ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml zos_job_submit_ansible_constructs.yml --tags "mode_development_yaml"
  3) Run in development mode using JSON cached input with verbose
        ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml zos_job_submit_ansible_constructs.yml --tags "mode_development_json,mode_verbose"
  4) Run in development mode using YAML cached input with verbose
        ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml zos_job_submit_ansible_constructs.yml --tags "mode_development_yaml,mode_verbose"
  5) Run in production mode on z/OS target
        ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml zos_job_submit_ansible_constructs.yml --tags "mode_production"
  6) Run in production mode on z/OS target with verbose
        ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml zos_job_submit_ansible_constructs.yml --tags "mode_production,mode_verbose"

Changelog

All changes are maintained chronologically by date found in the changelog.

Copyright

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2021

License

Licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0.

Support

Please refer to the support section for more details.