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Learning Ansible 2.7

By : Fabio Alessandro Locati

2.7 (3)

Learning Ansible 2.7

2.7 (3)

By: Fabio Alessandro Locati

Overview of this book

Ansible is an open source automation platform that assists organizations with tasks such as application deployment, orchestration, and task automation. With the release of Ansible 2.7, even complex tasks can be handled much more easily than before. Learning Ansible 2.7 will help you take your first steps toward understanding the fundamentals and practical aspects of Ansible by introducing you to topics such as playbooks, modules, and the installation of Linux, Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), and Windows support. In addition to this, you will focus on various testing strategies, deployment, and orchestration to build on your knowledge. The book will then help you get accustomed to features including cleaner architecture, task blocks, and playbook parsing, which can help you to streamline automation processes. Next, you will learn how to integrate Ansible with cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) before gaining insights into the enterprise versions of Ansible, Ansible Tower and Ansible Galaxy. This will help you to use Ansible to interact with different operating systems and improve your working efficiency. By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the Ansible skills you need to automate complex tasks for your organization.

Preface

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

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Free Chapter

Section 1: Creating a Web Server Using Ansible

Section 1: Creating a Web Server Using Ansible

Getting Started with Ansible

Getting Started with Ansible

Technical requirements

IT automation

What is Ansible?

Why Ansible?

Installing Ansible

Creating a test environment with Vagrant

Version control systems

Using Ansible with Git

Summary

Automating Simple Tasks

Automating Simple Tasks

Technical Requirement

YAML

Working with playbooks

Ansible verbosity

Variables in playbooks

Creating the Ansible user

Configuring a basic server

Installing and configuring a web server

Publishing a website

Jinja2 templates

Summary

Section 2: Deploying Playbooks in a Production Environment

Section 2: Deploying Playbooks in a Production Environment

Scaling to Multiple Hosts

Scaling to Multiple Hosts

Technical requirements

Working with inventory files

Working with variables

Summary

Handling Complex Deployment

Handling Complex Deployment

Technical requirements

Working with the local_action feature

Delegating a task

Working with conditionals

Working with include

Working with handlers

Working with roles

Organizing a project

Anatomy of a role

Transforming your playbooks in a full Ansible project

Transforming a playbook into a role

Helper files

Transforming the webserver role

Handlers in roles

Execution strategies

The Ansible template – Jinja filters

Formatting data using filters

Defaulting undefined variables

Security management

Using Ansible Vault

Vaults and playbooks

Encrypting user passwords

Hiding passwords

Using no_log

Summary

Going Cloud

Going Cloud

Technical requirements

Provisioning resources in the cloud

Provisioning machines in AWS

Provisioning machines in DigitalOcean

Provisioning machines in Azure

Summary

Getting Notification from Ansible

Getting Notification from Ansible

Technical requirements

Sending emails with Ansible

XMPP

Slack

Rocket Chat

Internet Relay Chat

Amazon Simple Notification Service

Nagios

Summary

Section 3: Deploying an Application with Ansible

Section 3: Deploying an Application with Ansible

Creating a Custom Module

Creating a Custom Module

Prerequisite

Using Python to write modules

Using bash modules

Using Ruby modules

Testing modules

Summary

Debugging and Error Handling

Debugging and Error Handling

Technical requirements

Syntax checking

The check mode

Indicating differences between files using --diff

Functional testing in Ansible

Testing with tags

Managing exceptions

Trigger failure

Summary

Complex Environments

Complex Environments

Technical requirements

Code based on the Git branch

Software distribution strategy

Preparing the environment

Deploying a web app with a revision control system

Deploying a web app with RPM packages

Building compiled software with RPM packaging

Deployment strategies

Optimizations

Summary

Section 4: Deploying an Application with Ansible

Section 4: Deploying an Application with Ansible

Introducing Ansible for Enterprises

Introducing Ansible for Enterprises

Technical requirements

Ansible on Windows

Ansible Galaxy

Ansible Tower and AWX

Summary

Getting Started with AWX

Getting Started with AWX

Technical requirements

Setting up AWX

Creating new AWX projects

Using AWX inventories

Understanding AWX job templates

Using AWX jobs

Summary

Working with AWX Users, Permissions, and Organizations

Working with AWX Users, Permissions, and Organizations

Technical requirements

AWX users and permissions

AWX organizations

Summary

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Getting Started with AWX

As we have seen in the previous chapters, Ansible is a very powerful tool. This is not enough to make it ubiquitous. In fact, for it to become ubiquitous, a tool needs to be easy to use at any user level and easy to integrate in various ways with existing environments.

Ansible Inc recognized this and created a tool called Ansible Tower, which was basically a Web UI and API set around Ansible. Ansible Tower was a closed source tool, which was also the main source of revenue for the company. When Red Hat announced that it had acquired Ansible, its management also committed to making Ansible Tower open source. A couple of years later, Red Hat open sourced Ansible Tower, creating the AWX project, which is now the upstream of Ansible Tower, in the same way Fedora is the upstream of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Before AWX, other Web UIs and API sets were developed...

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