Deploying and managing web servers manually can be time-consuming and error-prone, especially when you need consistent environments across development, staging, and production.

In this project, I built a solution to automate the entire setup of production-ready web servers using Ansible and Terraform — two powerful tools for Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and automation.

What This Project Does

Automatically configures Nginx as the web server
Sets up UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) for enhanced security
Installs and manages Docker for containerized applications
Provisions AWS infrastructure such as EC2 instances using Terraform

This lets you quickly spin up new servers with identical configurations, reducing manual effort and minimizing configuration drift.

Why Use Ansible and Terraform?

Ansible: Agentless automation tool for configuring servers, installing software, and managing users with repeatable playbooks.
Terraform: Cloud infrastructure provisioning tool that uses declarative configs to create and manage resources like EC2 instances.

Together, they provide a powerful IaC workflow for modern infrastructure management.

How to Get Started

Prerequisites

Ansible (v2.9+):
Install with pip:
```
  pip install ansible
```
Terraform (v1.5+):
Download from Terraform Downloads
AWS CLI:
Configure with your credentials:
```
  aws configure
```
Python 3
Git
An AWS account with permissions to create EC2 instances and security groups

Project Structure

The project includes:

automate-server-ansible/
├── ansible.cfg                # Ansible configuration
├── group_vars/all.yml         # Shared variables for hosts
├── inventory/aws_ec2.yml      # AWS EC2 inventory
├── playbook.yml               # Main Ansible playbook
├── roles/                     # Modular Ansible roles
│   ├── common/tasks/main.yml  # System updates
│   ├── docker/tasks/main.yml  # Docker setup
│   ├── nginx/                 # Nginx setup
│   │   ├── handlers/main.yml
│   │   ├── tasks/main.yml
│   │   └── templates/nginx.conf.j2
│   ├── ufw/tasks/main.yml     # UFW firewall setup
│   └── user/tasks/main.yml    # User account setup
├── terraform/                 # AWS infrastructure
│   ├── main.tf                # Terraform config
│   ├── outputs.tf             # Output definitions
│   ├── variables.tf           # Variables
│   └── terraform.tfstate      # Terraform state file
├── .github/workflows/lint.yml # CI linting
├── .gitignore                 # Git ignore rules
├── LICENSE                    # MIT License
└── README.md                  # Project documentation

Basic Usage

Clone the repository

 git clone https://github.com/reehassan/automate-server-ansible.git
 cd automate-server-ansible

Set up AWS credentials

 export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="your-access-key"
 export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="your-secret-key"

Provision AWS infrastructure

 cd terraform
 terraform init
 terraform apply

Run Ansible playbook to configure servers

 ansible-playbook -i inventory/aws_ec2.yml playbook.yml

Verify your setup

 curl http://<server-ip>
 ssh <server-ip> docker --version
 ssh <server-ip> sudo ufw status

Final Thoughts

Automating server setups saves time, reduces errors, and enforces best practices in infrastructure management. This project is ideal for DevOps engineers, sysadmins, and developers aiming to build scalable and reliable infrastructure with ease.

Explore the Code

Check out the full source code and get started here:
https://github.com/reehassan/automate-server-ansible.git

Feel free to reach out if you have questions or want to collaborate!

Automate Server Setup with Ansible and Terraform: Simplify Your Web Server Deployment