Configuration Management with Ansible:
A Whirlwind Tour



Why choose Ansible vs Chef or Puppet?



• Easiest to get started with
• No agents, no client/server
• Done over SSH
• Ansible can scale to thousands of hosts
• Ansible uses Python, yay!

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Super-simple Ansible Tutorial



# Install Ansible
apt-get install ansible


Folder Structure



images/215-1.png

• roles: can be further segregated into webserver, dbserver etc.
• handlers: for very simple task
• tasks: main configuration
• templates: files that have variables; use python jinja2 template engine

Playbook


• A playbook is a collection of tasks split into different roles
• We want to set up a new machine

Prep the machine


• add sshkey (or install sshpass and use --ask-pass)
• install python, python-apt

# Run a playbook
cd dirname
ansible-playbook -i hosts site.yml



Ansible Development Workflow:


• write some stuff
• run some stuff
• check if everything actually worked
• fix bugs, run again
• repeat

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A larger Ansible project



mkdir -p basics/{group_vars,roles}/
touch group_vars/all
touch site.yml
mkdir -p roles/common/{files,handlers,tasks,templates}
touch /roles/common/{handlers,tasks}/main.yml

tree .

Index