Ansible for deploying a FullCtl managed routeserver

For additional documentation visit https://docs.fullctl.com/ixctl/

Configuration

For this example the basic required environment is shown, this should be customized and expanded upon as needed.

Define your host inventory in prod/hosts, this can be expanded to multiple inventories for per site.

Global shared env is defined in group_vars/all.yaml, the FULLCTL_* values should be secured in a vault.

---
FULLCTL_ORG: org
FULLCTL_IXP: org_ix
FULLCTL_API_KEY: xxx

Shared routeserver env is defined in group_vars/rs.yaml, at minimum you need to define a container version tag rs_image_tag

---
rs_image_registry: ghcr.io
rs_image_repo: fullctl/routeserver
rs_image_tag: 0.8.0-bird-2.14

Additionally each routeserver has its own env defined in host_vars/<rs-host-name>.yaml, this is used to store values such as heartbeat URLs, which should be stored as a vault.

---
vault_env:
  HEARTBEAT_URL_BIRD: "https://uptime.example.com/api/push/xxx"
  HEARTBEAT_URL_CONFIG: "https://uptime.example.com/api/push/xxx"

Deploying a routeserver

Once the env above is configured you can simply deploy to one or more routeserver host with the following command

ansible-playbook -i prod/ site.yaml --limit=rs1

Updating an existing deployment

When updating a routeserver, update rs_image_tag to the desired tag

Stop the currently running containers, disabling the service avoid needlessly flapping bird during an upgrade reboot

systemctl disable --now fullctl-birdrefresh.service
systemctl disable --now fullctl-routeserver.service

Upgrade host os, packages, and reboot as needed.

dnf update -y
reboot

Deploy new containers, identical to the first deployment

ansible-playbook -i prod/ site.yaml --limit=rs1

Managing an existing deployment

For additional documentation visit https://docs.fullctl.com/ixctl/Route-Server-Management/

The route server is deployed via podman containers under the root user

Running podman ps as root should show two containers runnin, fullctl_routeserver for the bird instance itself and fullctl_birdrefresh for a process that manages the config synchronization.

fullctl_routeserver
fullctl_birdrefresh

Both containers are controlled by two systemd units and can be managed like any other service

systemctl status fullctl-routeserver.service
systemctl status fullctl-birdrefresh.service

stop bird completely

systemctl disable --now fullctl-routeserver.service
systemctl disable --now fullctl-birdrefresh.service

start bird completely

systemctl enable --now fullctl-routeserver.service
systemctl enable --now fullctl-birdrefresh.service

list sessions

podman exec -it fullctl_routeserver /srv/bird/sbin/birdc show protocols

bird logs to the system journal and to flat files that are periodically rotated.

tail -F /srv/fullctl/rs/bird/var/log/bird.log

the current bird config is also available outside the container at /srv/fullctl/rs/bird/etc/bird.conf