MITOGEN
In the previous post, we discussed various ways to reduce the ansible-playbook execution time, those changes were mostly made in the ansible config file, by adding or adjusting certain parameters in the file. But as you may have noticed that those methods were not that effective in certain cases, while using those methods we have to be very cautious about the result as they may affect ansible performance in one way or the other.
Generally,
for the slower ansible execution, the main culprit is the way ansible
is executed on the hosts. It creates multiple SSH connections and does
not fully utilize the available resources. To tackle this problem,
MITOGEN came to rescue !!!
Mitogen is a distributed programming library for Python. The Mitogen extension is a set of plug-ins for Ansible that enable it to operate via Mitogen, vastly improving its performance and enhancing its functional capability.
We all know about the strategies in ansible – linear, free & debug., the mitogen is just defined in the strategy column of the config file, so it is just a strategy, we are not making any other changes in the config file of the ansible so it is not affecting any other parameter, it is just the way, playbooks will be executed on the hosts.
Now coming to the mitogen installation part, we just have to download this package at a particular location and make some changes in the ansible config file as shown below,
[defaults]
strategy_plugins = /path/to/mitogen/ansible_mitogen/plugins/strategystrategy = mitogen_linear
we have to define the path where we have stored our mitogen files, and mention the strategy as “mitogen_linear”, under the default section of the config file, and we are good to go.
Now, after the Mitogen installation part, when we run our playbook, we will notice a reasonable reduction in the execution time,
Mitogen is fast because of the following reasons,
- One connection is created per target and system logs aren’t spammed with repeated authentication events.
- A single network roundtrip is used to execute a step whose code already exists in RAM on the target.
- Processes are aggressively reused, avoiding the cost of invoking Python and recompiling imports, saving 300-800 ms for every playbook step.
- Code is cached in the RAM, which further increases the speed.
- Generally, ansible repeatedly rewrites and extracts ZIP files to temporary directories in the target hosts, mitogen also reduces these rewrites.
All the above-mentioned features make the ansible to run faster.
Mitogen is another extension for ansible that provides a decrease in its execution time and it is very easy to use, I think MITOGEN is very underrated and one of its kind, and we should definitely give it a try.
I hope I have explained everything well, any suggestion/queries are highly appreciated.
Thanks !!!
Source:
https://mitogen.networkgenomics.com/ansible_detailed.html