Mitogen
Mitogen is a program that miraculously speeds up the remote execution of Python scripts.
It also has an Ansible plugin. At first, I thought it looked too complicated to set up, so I let it go. Eventually, I found a post that described just how easy it was to configure.
Download the Code
wget https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/source/m/mitogen/mitogen-0.3.22.tar.gz
Extract it into a fodder of your choice. I simply put it in my home folder.
tar xvzf mitogen-0.3.22.tar.gz
Add the Plugin to your Ansible Config
I went for editing my ~/.ansible.cfg and adding the settings there. I have a few other performance items in there, like pipelining and some SSH parameters.
[defaults]
vault_password_file = ~/.ansible/secret
pipelining = True
host_key_checking = False
strategy_plugins = ~/mitogen-0.3.22/ansible_mitogen/plugins/strategy
strategy = mitogen_linear
[ssh_connection]
ssh_args = -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o ControlPath=/tmp/ssh-control-%hAs you can see, all I did was add it to my config, I haven’t changed any playbooks or Ansible tasks etc.
The Evidence
Before the config changes and addition of mitogen.
$ time ansible-playbook playbook.yml -i inventory.yml --limit my-host --tags icinga2
________________________________________________________
Executed in 45.77 secs fish external
usr time 5.79 secs 945.00 micros 5.79 secs
sys time 2.24 secs 180.00 micros 2.24 secsAfter
$ time ansible-playbook playbook.yml -i inventory.yml --limit my-host --tags icinga2
________________________________________________________
Executed in 14.16 secs fish external
usr time 2.68 secs 12.99 millis 2.67 secs
sys time 0.58 secs 15.29 millis 0.56 secsThese are a selection of small tasks, but you can see it goes from 45s down to only 15s. That’s three times faster with no changes to my tasks.
Quite a saving with just one host. If we’re running this on many hosts, it’s a huge saving.
References
https://mitogen.networkgenomics.com/ansible_detailed.html