Ansible win_ping module getting timed out in windows - windows

Question

I am new to Ansible and trying to use win_ping module to ping a Windows Server 2016 (EC2 instance). Ansible is on RHEL 7.3 control machine, I have pip and pywinrm installed in control machine:
sudo pip install "pywinrm>=0.2.2"
This is my inventory file:
test ansible_connection=winrm ansible_host=34.210.164.63
[test_group]
test
[super_group:children]
test_group
[super_group:vars]
ansible_user=Administrator
ansible_password=XXXX
ansible_port=5986
ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation=ignore
This is the command I tried:
ansible all -i inventory -m win_ping
I am getting this error:
test | UNREACHABLE! => {
"changed": false,
"msg": "ssl: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='34.210.164.63', port=5986): Max retries exceeded with url: /wsman (Caused by ConnectTimeoutError(<urllib3.connection.VerifiedHTTPSConnection object at 0x30df350>, 'Connection to 34.210.164.63 timed out. (connect timeout=30)'))",
"unreachable": true
}
In Windows Server 2016, Server Manager Remoting is already enabled by default, I validated it using Configure-SMremoting.exe -enable command. I did not made any configurations at Windows Server since this remoting is already enabled. Please let me know how to resolve this issue.
EDIT:
Not sure if these steps are required or notm but I tried enabling PowerShell Remoting using this command:
Enable-PSRemoting -Force
Then tried powershell.exe -File ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 and I an getting error:
At C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1:128 char:13
+ </a> <a href="/business" class="js-selected-navigation-item na ...
+ ~
The '<' operator is reserved for future use.
At C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1:130 char:13
+ </a> <a href="/explore" class="js-selected-navigation-item nav ...
+ ~
The '<' operator is reserved for future use.
At C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1:132 char:17
+ </a> <a href="/marketplace" class="js-selected-navigation- ...
+ ~
The '<' operator is reserved for future use.
At C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1:134 char:13
+ </a> <a href="/pricing" class="js-selected-navigation-item nav ...
+ ~
The '<' operator is reserved for future use.
At C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1:136 char:11
+ </a> </nav>
+ ~
The '<' operator is reserved for future use.
At C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1:3221 char:227
+ ... g:0;display:inline"><input name="utf8" type="hidden" value="✓" ...
+ ~
The ampersand (&) character is not allowed. The & operator is reserved for future use; wrap an ampersand in double
quotation marks ("&") to pass it as part of a string.
At C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1:3224 char:10
+ </form> </div>
+ ~
The '<' operator is reserved for future use.
At C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1:3252 char:11
+ <li>© 2017 <span title="0.13767s from github-fe-df0f95a.cp ...
+ ~
The ampersand (&) character is not allowed. The & operator is reserved for future use; wrap an ampersand in double
quotation marks ("&") to pass it as part of a string.
At C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1:3252 char:23
+ <li>© 2017 <span title="0.13767s from github-fe-df0f95a.cp ...
+ ~
The '<' operator is reserved for future use.
At C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1:3252 char:29
+ ... 2017 <span title="0.13767s from github-fe-df0f95a.cp1-iad.github.net ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unexpected token 'title="0.13767s from github-fe-df0f95a.cp1-iad.github.net">GitHub</span>' in expression or statement.
Not all parse errors were reported. Correct the reported errors and try again.
+ CategoryInfo : ParserError: (:) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : RedirectionNotSupported
I guess I need to configure enable Remote Power Shell in my Windows Server to resolve this issue but not sure how to since I get the above erorr - please suggest.

Answer 1

I would go over windows logs. If they do not contain info you need - increase the verbosity.
Ping relies on winrm being up. WinRM needs execution policy changes, service configuration, ssl certificates, etc.
Maybe the safest path is to reconfigure ansible using the documentation.
The powershell remoting must be configured, in ec2 you can do this by adding user-data, running the script there, just paste the commands there.
Also, your ansible master machine must be able to connect to your target host, usually done by allowing it via security group, and creating the instance in that group.
So, in order to debug your stuff you should present the code/actions you did to setup security groups, possibly routes, and instance creation.

Answer 2

This is probably an AWS side issue not an ansible issue. Is your ansible server allowed to talk to your Windows EC2 instance via security group rules? By default everything is denied. You'll need to allow ICMP coming from the ansible server's address in the Windows EC2 instance's security group rules as well as from the windows server in the ansible server security group rules (if your ansible server is also an EC2 instance). If the ansible server is not an EC2 instance, make sure your firewall isn't blocking ICMP in or out for some reason.
Are these two servers on the same subnet/VPC within your account? If not, you'll have to create a VPC peering connection between the VPCs they are located on and edit route tables to point VPCs to the peering connection if traffic is coming from / going to the other VPC. The purpose of this is so that the two instances in separate VPCs can recognize and communicate with each other

Answer 3

I am probably late to the party, but I noticed the error you got when running powershell.exe -File ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1. It's complaining about the syntax, and as far as I can tell you have HTML in that file. Did you maybe save the GitLab HTML page from the script?
Download the raw file here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible/ansible/devel/examples/scripts/ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 and try again.