Ansible

What is Ansible?

Ansible is an open source IT automation engine that automates

• provisioning

• configuration management

• application deployment

• orchestration

and many other IT processes. It is free to use, and the project benefits from the experience and intelligence of its thousands of contribution.

How Ansible works?

Ansible is agentless-doesn't need any software on the manage nodes.

For automating Windows and Linux, ansible connects to managed nodes and pushes out small programs called Ansible modules. Ansible executes these modules and removes them when finished.

For devices where modules can't be executed, it runs on the control node.

Passwordless Authentication:

ssh-copy-id -f "-o IdentityFile path" ubuntu@public-ip

What is the difference between Ansible ad-hoc commands and playbooks?

Adhoc commands-for one or two tasks

Playbooks-for multiple commands.

Here are the steps for the above project:

Step1:Create one control node and 2 managed nodes

Step2:Set the passwordless authentication for both the manged nodes using the above command

ssh-copy-id -f "-o IdentityFile " ubuntu@publicip

or ssh -i path ubuntu@publicip

or using password :

• Go to the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/60-cloudimg-settings.conf

• Update PasswordAuthentication yes

• Restart SSH -> sudo systemctl restart ssh

Step3:

Create the inventory file and add their ipaddress

Step4:

Check if we can ping the webserver in the inventory file.

ansible -i inventory.ini -m ping all

Step5:

Write a playbook and run the above command.

---

• name: Install and start Nginx

• hosts: webservers

• become: yes

• tasks:

  • -name: Ensure Nginx is installed

  • apt:

  • name: nginx

  • state: present

  • update_cache: yes

  • -name: Ensure Nginx is started

  • service: name: nginx

  • state: started

  • enabled: yes

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini firstplaybook.yml