Discover more about Ansible! Ansible Tower and Ansible Containers:) The slides which I used to give a talk about Ansible at DevOps North East. The slides have been modified to make it easier to understand in case you have missed the talk :)

1. AnsibleAutomate everything
DevOps North East
Soroush Atarod – @_atarod
https://infinitypp.com
 Thanks Creative Agile for sponsoring the talk 

2. Life before using Ansible
• Shell Scripts……
• New Server, New Nightmare…….….
• Things go wrong, SSH in manual process………………..….

6. Current Automation products
• Chef
• Puppet
• SaltStack
• Ansible

7. What made me to select Ansible?
• Uses YAML. - very easy to learn but difficult to master
• Agentless.
• Easy to add custom modules.
• Ansible Tower

8. Introduction to Ansible
• Released in 2012.
• Acquired by Red Hat in October 2015.
• Developed in Python.
• Current version: 2.6
• 1850 Modules (from cloud providers, network, windows many more)

9. How does Ansible works? – Inventory files
Inventory
[web]
192.168.2.4
192.134.2.5
[db]
123.232.2.45

10. How does Ansible works?
Inventory
[web]
192.168.2.4
192.134.2.5
[db]
123.232.2.45
Playbook
- A single YAML file
- Define tasks
- Actions to perform
- Ex: install a package, restart
service

11. How does Ansible works?
Inventory
[web]
192.168.2.4
192.134.2.5
[db]
123.232.2.45
Playbook
- A single YAML file
- Define tasks
- Actions to perform
- Ex: install a package, restart
service
--------
Example: setup.yml
Hosts: web
Name: install Apache
Yum:
name: httpd
state: present
Modules
Yum
Service
Vmware
Aws
Azure
Mysql
Mongodb
1850 Modules!

12. Inventory files
•Stores details about the server
1. IP address
2. Username
3. Password
4. SSH Key

13. Inventory files - Example
[loadbalancer]
192.168.2.23
[webservers]
123.23.43.5
123.23.43.6
123.23.43.7
123.23.43.8
[dbservers]
172.12.65.34

14. Inventory files

15. Inventory files – better
[loadbalancer]
192.168.2.23
[webservers]
123.23.43.[5:65]
[dbservers]
172.12.65.34
RANGE
OPERATOR

16. Ansible Tasks
• Functions that perform an action
Tasks:
- name: install Apache
yum:
name: httpd
state: present
- name: start apache
service:
name: httpd
state: started
We are using two modules
1.YUM
2.Service

17. 2.1Ansible Tasks - for loops
- name: install PHP packages
yum:
name: {{ item }}
with_items:
php72
php72-mysql
php72-common
- with_item = for loop in Programming terminology.  :O
For ($items as $item) {
yum install $item
}

18. 2.1Ansible Handlers
- Hosts: web
- Tasks:
- name: install apache
apt-get: name=apache2 state=present
- name: enable mod_ssl
apache2_module: name= mod_ssl state=present
- Handlers:
- name: restart apache2
service: name=apache2 state:reloaded

19. 2.1Ansible Handlers
- Hosts: web
- Tasks:
- name: install apache
apt-get: name=apache2 state=present
- name: enable mod_ssl
apache2_module: name= mod_ssl state=present
notify: restart apache2
- Handlers:
- name: restart apache2
service: name=apache2 state:reloaded

20. Ansible task best practice
Naming of task:
- mention the intent of the task
current name
- name: install PHP
Better name
- name: install PHP even if it doesn’t exist

21. Ansible ROLES
- Responsible to do one thing.
- Install Apache only
- Install PHP only.
- Code reuse

22. Ansible ROLES
Roles
apache
php
mysql
common

23. 3.1 Ansible ROLES
create roles:
ansible-galaxy init apache
apache
- defaults
- handlers
- meta
- tasks
- tests
- vars

24. 3.1 Ansible ROLES
create roles:
ansible-galaxy init apache
apache
- defaults –variables
- handlers – we define handlers here
- meta – description of the role
- tasks - define the main task ex: install python, etc
- tests. - test script
- vars. - variables

25. 3.1 Ansible ROLES - variables
create roles:
ansible-galaxy init apache
two places to place your variables
1. Defaults directory – gets overridden by the “vars” directory
2. Vars directory

26. 3.3 Ansible ROLES - variables
where to save variables?
If (varibles->shouldBeOverridden ) {
place variables in defaults
} else {.
place variables in vars
}

27. 3.3 Ansible Galaxy
• https://galaxy.ansible.com/home
• Public registry of roles.
• Download community roles to speed up the process.
• More than 15,000 roles to download.
• Downloading roles is very easy
• This installs a hosts management role ready to use!
ansible-galaxy install ajsalminen.hosts

28. Ansible Tower
- Web application to manage and run playbooks.
- Gives anyone the permission to run a playbook.
- Example: users in the group ”Database developer” can
run “database playbook” only.
- Lets playbooks to be reused.

29. Ansible Tower demo
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/blocked-mysql-query/
Use case:
A query to my Amazon RDS for MySQL instance was
blocked, but no other queries were executing at the time
Solution:
Create a playbook that performs the manual job in
Ansible.
Give DB admins the access to this playbook only in
Ansible Tower.

30. Deployment strategies using Ansible
1. Blue-Green deployment
2. Zero-downtime deployment across multiple server
3. Single deployment

31. Zero-downtime deployment
- How to deploy applications across multiple servers
with zero-downtime deployment?
- Ansible provides “serial” keyword.
- Deploys on a selection of instances, if test passes
deploys to other instances!

32. Zero-downtime deployment
- 1 Load Balancer, 4 servers.

33. Zero-downtime deployment
Serial keyword
Deploy.yml  playbook that deploys
hosts: webservers
Serial: 2
Roles:
- app

34. Zero-downtime deployment
Serial
Deploy.yml
hosts: webservers
Serial: 2
Roles:
- app
4 servers.
Serial is set to 2
Ansible deploys to two instances. If the test
passes, continues the deployment to the rest.

35. Zero-downtime deployment
Serial
Deploy.yml
hosts: webservers
Serial: 2
Roles:
- app
Name: pull master branch
Git:
repo: ‘https://github.com/ere/apple.git
version: release-1.2
dest: /var/www/project/
uri:
url: http://localhost.com/health-status
return_content: yes
Register: webpage
name: Fail if we find FAILED in the page
Fail:
When: ” ‘FAILED’ ” not in webpage.content

36. Ansible Containers
- Ansible-Container can use Ansible roles to
provision Docker containers.
- Long Docker files can be rewritten in Ansible roles.
- Ansible installs the roles in a Docker image and
pushes it to Docker hub.

37. Ansible Containers
- How to begin?
- Download the GIT repo:
https://github.com/ansible/ansible-container
cd ansible-container
pip install –e .[docker,openshift]

38. Ansible Containers
- How to start?
1.
2. Ansible creates the directory structure.
mkdir ansible-docker-demo
cd ansible-docker-demo
ansible-container init

39. Ansible Containers
3. container.yml is where you list out the Docker
image and the roles you need Ansible to run on the
Docker image

40. Ansible Containers
Container.yml example
Version: “2”
Services:
web:
from: “centos-7”
roles:
- apache
ports:
- “80:80”
command: [“/usr/sbin/httpd”, “-D”, “FOREGROUND”]
Ansible runs the role Apache on the
Docker container with the image
“Centos 7”
It then runs the command
Key things: No Docker files . Just
Ansible Roles

41. Questions 
- Thank you 
- See you next month 