Working with Ansible {Part-12}

Installing Apache through Ansible

Let's install the Apache through YAML using following code

---
- name: Installing Apache
  hosts: Node-1
  tasks:
    - name: task1 Installing Apache
      yum: 
        name: httpd
        state: latest
    - name: Enable service httpd
      systemd:
        name: httpd
        enabled: true
    - name: Copy file with owner and permissions
      copy:    
        src: ./index.html
        dest: /var/www/html/index.html
        owner: apache
        group: apache
      notify: Restart Apache
  handlers:
    - name: Restart Apache
      systemd:
        state: restarted 
        daemon_reload: true
        name: httpd

This Playbook is available on the internet.

---

Roles in Ansible

We can use Roles for reusing a set of tasks. Roles are good for organizing tasks and encapsulating data needed to accomplish those tasks.

ANSIBLE ROLES

• Default-> It stores the data about role/application default variables e.g. if you want to run to port 80 or 8080 then variables need to be defined in this path.

• Files-> It contains files that need to be transferred to the remote VM (static files) without variables.

• Handlers-> They are triggers or tasks e.g. in the above playbook we are restarting the Apache. We can segregate all the handlers required in the playbook.

• Meta-> This directory contains files that establish roles dependencies e.g. Author Name, Supported platform, and dependencies if any.

• Template-> It contains files that need to be transferred to the remote VM with variable values

• Tasks-> It contains all the tasks that are normally in the playbook e.g. Installing packages and copying files etc.

• Vars-> Variables for the role can be specified in this directory and used in your configuration files both vars and default variables.

1. We can Organise playbooks into a directory structure called roles.

2. Adding more and more functionality to the playbooks will make it difficult to maintain in a single file.

---

Now, For installing Apache we will create the roles for our Ansible playbook.

• There are 4 sections in the above playbook

  i) Name

  ii) hosts

  iii) tasks

  iv) handlers

• To achieve Roles we will create 3 directories

  i) handlers

  ii) tasks

  iii) files

• Let's create the directories in Apache

  

• Now, Create the index.html in the files directory

  

• After this, let's define the handlers section with the main.yaml in the handlers directory

       -    name: Restart Apache
                 systemd:
                    state: restarted 
                    daemon_reload: true
                    name: httpd
  

  

• Let's define the tasks section in the tasks directory with main.yaml

        - name: task1 Installing Apache
          yum: 
            name: httpd
            state: latest
        - name: Enable service httpd
          systemd:
            name: httpd
            enabled: true
        - name: Copy file with owner and permissions
          copy:    
            src: ./index.html
            dest: /var/www/html/index.html
            owner: apache
            group: apache
          notify: Restart Apache
  

• Let's see the tree structure as follows and we can see that our role is ready.

  

• Now, For our application 1, we need to install Apache. Let's see How we are going to install that

  

    ---
    - name: Installing Apache for application Through Roles
      hosts: Node-2
      roles:
        - apache
  

  

• Now, to install the Apache via roles we need to copy Ansible files (mykey.pem, ansiblehosts, ansible.cfg) to the app1 directory.

  

• Now, give the roles_path to the ansible.cfg file and save the file.

  

• Now, Execute the Ansible-Playbook and observe whether the index.html content is getting displayed or not.

  

  

  Hence, we saw the use of Roles in the Ansible for the Installation of Apache. Kindly visit my Github profile to check the code for installing Apache.

  %[https://github.com/chiragkuk24/Ansible_Learning/blob/main/010_Installing_Apache_via_Ansible.yaml]