Day 2 - Creating Ansible Playbooks

Introduction

Definition of Ansible Playbooks

Ansible Playbooks are the YAML files that define a set of tasks to be executed on managed nodes. They are used to describe automation workflows in a human-readable format.

Importance of Ansible in IT Automation

Ansible Playbook follows a declarative approach, instead of specifying step-by-step instructions which is an imperative approach, the desired end result is described. To simplify, consider if we are required to have a service in a running state or a package to be installed, and then Ansible will handle all the steps of how the desired state can be achieved.

Getting Started with Ansible

Installing Ansible

Reference to Ansible installation guide

Writing the First Ansible Playbook

Creating the YAML File

Let’s create a simple Ansible playbook and execute the same:

We will create a sample txt file on localhost which is the Master node of Ansible copy it to the host nodes using Ansible-playbook

sudo vi copy_file.yml

Checking the syntax of the playbook:

ansible-playbook --syntax-check copy_file.yml

Make sure the host instances are running:

Adding Inventory

Verify if the hostnames are present in the inventory file on the Ansible machine:

Running the Playbook

Error Handling and Debugging

Since the execution permission was not given, the playbook didn’t get successfully executed and the process was stuck indefinitely.

Make sure that the execution permission is given to the playbook.

chmod +x playbook.yml

Output

The file1.txt file is visible on host machines

Nginx and Apache2 Installation using Playbook

Now, let’s try installing Nginx and Apache on server01 and server02 respectively

Verifying if the ssh connections to the hosts are intact

ansible all -m ping

Checking the playbook syntax

ansible-playbook --syntax-check installer.yml

yaml code:

Running the Playbook

ansible-playbook installer.yml

Nginx and Apache webservers are successfully installed on server01 and server02

If we navigate with the public IPs of the servers, we will land on the default pages of Nginx and Apche2 webservers.

Conclusion

In this Blog, we have seen how to install and configure the remote servers using Ansible-playbooks. Let’s dive deep and explore some more functionalities of the configuration management tool in the upcoming blog series!!