Now that I have my “base cluster” up and running with ProxMox, it’s time to turn my attention to how I’m going to manage it.

After creating a new management user I setup ssh certs to permit ssh traffic from the master to slave systems.

Instalation of Ansible was a breeze

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install software-properties-common
$ sudo apt-add-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible
$ sudo apt install ansible

After creating an inventory file, and then a quick and dirty playboook...I tested it out and...

voila!

First run went smashing..although it showed that there WAS actually an update or two on 2/3 of the servers.

After running my playbook again it looks like everything was in fact in order.

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Issue #1 – IP Address not configured correctly

The fix

sudo rm /etc/machine-id
sudo systemd-machine-id-setup
sudo reboot

as per https://jaylacroix.com/fixing-ubuntu-18-04-virtual-machines-that-fight-over-the-same-ip-address/

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Issue #2 – Time Sync (aka NTP Server / Client Config)

The fix

setup ntp server on ubuntu01

setup ntp client on ubuntu02 through ubuntu04

as per https://vitux.com/how-to-install-ntp-server-and-client-on-ubuntu/

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Issue #3 – Time / Date Appearance

The fix – simple reconfiguration as per https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-set-or-change-timezone-on-ubuntu-18-04/