In today’s infrastructure landscape—where application teams demand agility, storage teams require reliability and consistency, and automation is increasingly non-negotiable—bringing a true “infrastructure-as-a-code” paradigm to enterprise storage is critical. For organizations using the IBM Storage Virtualize family Systems, Ansible collection helps them automate day-to-day storage administration tasks as well as make them efficient by helping automate complex FlashSystem configurations like PBHA, PBR, PBRHA and FlashSystem Grid.

Key points:

• It supports the storage systems built on the Storage Virtualize architecture: SAN Volume Controller (SVC), FlashSystem built with Storage Virtualize and Storwize.
• It leverages REST API interfaces (and some SSH/CLI where needed) to achieve its functions.
• It provides a large number of modules—covering authentication, initial setup, hosts, volumes, snapshots, replication, cloud backup, drives, provisioning policy, security and more.
• The collection follows semantic versioning, is updated regularly (quarterly releases typical) and supports Ansible Core versions and Python combinations guided by Ansible community for controller nodes.[1]

For a storage administrator, that means this collection gives user the tools to codify many of the day-2 and lifecycle operations of the storage systems—group creation, mappings, snapshots, replication policies, backup to cloud, etc—directly via Ansible playbooks.

Why it matters: Benefits from Storage Administrator’s lens

Here’s how this collection can translate into real value:

1. Idempotency and Consistency:
   Instead of manual CLI commands, GUI steps or ad-hoc scripts, you can define storage configurations (volumes, pools, replication policies) in Ansible playbooks or roles. These are idempotent, testable and reusable.
2. Application-aware workflows
   IBM SV Ansible collection gives you a unified automation domain—application + storage. For example, you could use the collection modules to orchestrate storage snapshots, then tie that into your application layer and then tie into your backup/restore workflows.
3. Reduced risk of human error
   Using modules ensures idempotency (modules check if the object exists before creating, etc). With high-availability systems you cannot afford configuration drift; automation helps eliminate manual errors.
4. Faster lifecycle operations
   Provisioning, mapping volumes, creating snapshots, replication setups—all can be scripted. For example, provisioning a host cluster + volumes + mapping + snapshot policy can be done in one Playbook run. This accelerates your infrastructure provisioning for applications.
5. Better traceability and versioning
   Playbooks become the “source of truth” for how storage is configured and consumed. This is useful in regulated/high-availability systems where you want change control and auditing.
6. Integration with broader automation pipelines
   Since you are working cross-functionally (app teams, infra teams), using Ansible means you can integrate into CI/CD pipelines (e.g., provisioning the storage layer when an application environment is instantiated, tearing down when done). The collection gives you the “storage primitives”.
   
   

   How to get started: Installation & basic usage

   Here’s a quick walk-through of how you would get started with the collection:

   Install the collection:

   To install the IBM Storage Virtualize collection hosted in Galaxy:

2.  ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.storage_virtualize

         To upgrade to the latest version of the IBM Storage Virtualize collection:

2.  ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.storage_virtualize –force

Playbooks

To use a module from the IBM Storage Virtualize collection, please reference the full namespace, collection name, and module name that you want to use:

---
- name: Using the IBM Storage Virtualize collection
  hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: Gather information from IBM FlashSystem
      ibm.storage_virtualize.ibm_svc_info:
       clustername: "{{ clustername }}"
       domain: "{{ domain }}"
       username: "{{ username }}"
       password: "{{ password }}"
       log_path: "{{ log_path }}"
       gather_subset: all

   - name: Create a 100 GB volume volume0 under volumegroup VG0
     ibm.storage_virtualize.ibm_svc_manage_volume:
       clustername: "{{ clustername }}"
       domain: "{{ domain }}"
       username: "{{ username }}"
       password: "{{ password }}"
       log_path: "{{ log_path }}"
       name: "volume0"
       state: "present"
       pool: "pool_name"
       size: "100"
       unit: "gb"
       iogrp: "io_grp0, io_grp1"
       volumegroup: "VG0"

References:

[1] Ansible-core and python support matrix: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/release_and_maintenance.html#ansible-core-support-matrix

[2] Redhat Certified IBM SV Ansible Collection: https://console.redhat.com/ansible/automation-hub/repo/published/ibm/storage_virtualize/

[3] Ansible galaxy (Community version): https://galaxy.ansible.com/ui/repo/published/ibm/storage_virtualize/

[4] Do More with Less: Automating IBM Storage FlashSystem Tasks with REST APIs, Scripting, and Ansible https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/pdfs/redp5736.pdf