Learn Ansible: Automate your cloud infrastructure, security configuration, and application deployment with Ansible. 2 Ed

Learn Ansible....2

Contributors....3

About the author....3

About the reviewer....4

Preface....21

Who this book is for....22

What this book covers....23

To get the most out of this book....24

Download the example code files....25

Conventions used....25

Get in touch....26

Share Your Thoughts....26

Download a free PDF copy of this book....26

Part 1: Introducing, Installing, and Running Ansible....28

Chapter 1: Installing and Running Ansible....29

Technical requirements....29

My story: part one....30

Ansible’s story....31

What is Ansible?....31

Ansible, the software....32

Ansible versus other tools....33

Declarative versus imperative....34

Configuration versus orchestration....37

Looking at some code....37

My story: part two....40

Installing and running Ansible....40

Installing on macOS....40

Installing on Linux....45

Installing on Windows 11....47

Launching a virtual machine....49

An introduction to playbooks....51

Host inventories....52

Playbooks....54

Summary....61

Further reading....62

Chapter 2: Exploring Ansible Galaxy....63

Technical requirements....63

The Ansible release life cycle....63

The life cycle of a release....65

Introduction to Ansible Galaxy....66

What is a role?....67

Publishing to and using Ansible Galaxy roles....71

Publishing your roles to Ansible Galaxy....72

Using roles from Ansible Galaxy....75

Ansible collections....78

Ansible Galaxy commands....78

Summary....80

Further reading....80

Chapter 3: The Ansible Commands....81

Inbuilt commands....81

Ansible....81

The ansible-config command....87

The ansible-console command....88

The ansible-inventory command....90

What is ansible-pull?....91

Using the ansible-vault command....92

Third-party commands....97

The ansible-inventory-grapher command....97

Summary....99

Further reading....99

Part 2: Deploying Applications....101

Chapter 4: Deploying a LAMP Stack....102

Technical requirements....102

The playbook structure....103

The LAMP stack....104

The common role....104

The Apache role....108

The MariaDB role....112

The PHP role....117

The LAMP playbook....120

Summary....124

Further reading....124

Chapter 5: Deploying WordPress....125

Technical requirements....125

Preinstallation tasks....125

The stack_install role....126

Enabling the NGINX repository....127

The stack_config role....129

WordPress system user....129

NGINX configuration....130

The wordpress role....136

Some facts....136

WordPress CLI installation....137

Creating the WordPress database....137

Downloading, configuring, and installing WordPress....138

WordPress plugins installation....140

Running the WordPress playbook....141

Summary....145

Further reading....145

Chapter 6: Targeting Multiple Distributions....147

Technical requirements....147

Debian and Red Hat....148

Multi-distribution considerations....149

The Stack Install role....149

The Stack Config role....150

The WordPress role....150

Adapting the roles....151

Operating system family....151

The Stack Install role....153

The Stack Config role....154

The WordPress role....157

Running the playbook....157

Summary....159

Further reading....159

Chapter 7: Ansible Windows Modules....160

Technical requirements....160

Launching a Windows server in Azure....160

Ansible preparation....164

The ping module....166

The setup module....166

The Windows Playbook roles....168

Enabling Windows features....168

Creating a user....171

Installing applications using Chocolatey....171

Information role....172

Running the Playbook....172

Summary....174

Further reading....175

Part 3: Network and Cloud Automation....176

Chapter 8: Ansible Network Modules....177

Manufacturer and device support....177

The collections....178

Summary....184

Further reading....184

Chapter 9: Moving to the Cloud....185

Technical requirements....185

An introduction to Microsoft Azure....185

Launching instances in Microsoft Azure....186

Preparing Ansible for Microsoft Azure....187

Reviewing the variables....187

The resource group task....190

The networking tasks....191

Bootstrapping WordPress....197

The site and host environment files....197

The secrets role....198

Other changes....199

Running the playbook....199

Summary....200

Chapter 10: Building Out a Cloud Network....202

Technical requirements....202

An introduction to AWS....202

Amazon VPC overview....204

Creating an access key and secret....205

Getting Ansible ready for targeting AWS....206

The AWS playbook....207

The playbook variables....208

The VPC role....209

The subnets role....210

The gateway role....213

The security group’s role....214

Running the playbook....216

Summary....218

Further reading....218

Chapter 11: Highly Available Cloud Deployments....219

Technical requirements....219

Planning the deployment....219

Costing the deployment....220

WordPress considerations and high availability....221

The Playbook....222

The variables....224

EC2 configuration....226

The Playbook roles....229

Running the Playbook....245

Playbook run highlights....246

Terminating all the resources....251

Summary....253

Chapter 12: Building Out a VMware Deployment....254

Technical requirements....254

An introduction to VMware....254

The VMware REST modules....255

VMware REST appliance modules....255

VMware REST content modules....259

vCenter modules....259

Summary....262

Part 4: Ansible Workflows....263

Chapter 13: Scanning Your Ansible Playbooks....264

Technical requirements....264

Why scan your playbooks?....264

Docker overview and installation....265

Installing Docker Desktop on macOS....265

Installing Docker Desktop on Windows....266

Installing Docker Desktop on Linux....266

Exploring Checkov....266

Exploring KICS....271

Running the scan....271

Reviewing the results....272

Re-running the scan....276

Output files....276

Summary....278

Further reading....278

Chapter 14: Hardening Your Servers Using Ansible....279

Technical requirements....279

The scanning tools....279

OpenSCAP....279

WPScan....281

OWASP ZAP....281

The playbook....282

The common role....283

The Docker role....283

The WordPress roles....284

The scan role....284

The OpenSCAP role....287

Running the playbook....294

Summary....296

Chapter 15: Using Ansible with GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps....298

Technical requirements....298

GitHub Actions....298

Preparation....299

Understanding the GitHub Action workflow....303

Committing the code....308

Azure DevOps....312

Creating and configuring our project....313

Cloning the repository and uploading the code....315

The Azure DevOps pipeline....316

Summary....324

Further reading....324

Chapter 16: Introducing Ansible AWX and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform....325

Technical requirements....325

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform versus AWX....325

Ansible AWX....327

Deploying and configuring the Ansible AWX Operator....327

Setting up our playbook....331

Running our playbooks....337

Terminating the Kubernetes cluster....339

Playbook considerations....340

Ansible AWX’s advantages and disadvantages....342

Summary....343

Further reading....344

Chapter 17: Next Steps with Ansible....345

Technical requirements....345

Integrating with third-party services....345

Slack....345

Other integrations....351

Summary of third-party services....353

The Ansible playbook debugger....355

Debugging the task....355

Summary of the Ansible debugger....357

Some real-world examples....357

Automating a complex deployment....358

Combining Ansible and other tools....358

Summary....362

Index....364

Why subscribe?....384

Other Books You May Enjoy....384

Packt is searching for authors like you....387

Share Your Thoughts....387

Download a free PDF copy of this book....387

Learn how to write and run Ansible Playbooks, from the basics to launching complex multi-tier applications across public cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure

Key Features

• Write roles to automate everything, from basic apps to the entire cloud infrastructure
• Leverage Ansible's module ecosystem to streamline tasks across cloud platforms, operating systems, and apps
• Adopt DevOps practices and integrate Ansible with CI/CD platforms to streamline automation workflows
• Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Book Description

Are you tired of manually deploying and managing your infrastructure and looking for ways to streamline your deployments, introduce consistency and collaboration, and save time? If so, then Learn Ansible is for you. Written by a DevOps practitioner and system administrator with 30+ years of experience, this book will teach you how to automate repetitive tasks and effortlessly manage several resources from a single code base.

From installing Ansible and writing your first playbook to deploying multi-tier applications across different cloud platforms, this book will take you on an exciting learning journey. By learning the art of defining highly available cloud infrastructure using code, you’ll find it easy to distribute configurations alongside your application. You’ll explore Ansible Galaxy, learn about community-contributed Ansible roles, and discover how to create and share your own roles. Later, the book delves into the capabilities of Ansible AWX and integrating Ansible with your CI/CD pipelines, using Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions. With real-world examples and hands-on tutorials, you’ll build a solid foundation to tackle any automation project.

By the end of this book, you'll be able to confidently implement Ansible in your environment and day-to-day workflows, taking your deployments to the next level.

What you will learn

• Understand how to install and configure Ansible on Linux, macOS, and Windows
• Write Ansible playbooks to automate system configuration and deployment
• Deploy applications such as LAMP stacks and WordPress using Ansible
• Create reusable roles and use Ansible Galaxy for sharing
• Automate infrastructure deployments on cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure
• Execute your Ansible playbooks with GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps
• Scan playbooks for security issues and secure systems using Ansible
• Centralize and manage Ansible deployments using Ansible AWX

Who this book is for

Learn Ansible is for system administrators, developers, and infrastructure engineers who want to implement infrastructure automation and configuration management using Ansible. The hands-on tutorials make this book ideal for both beginners as well as intermediate users looking to take their Ansible skills to the next level. Technology professionals working with public cloud platforms like AWS and Azure will also find valuable insights into automating deployments.