What is Ansible?
Ansible is an open-source automation tool, or platform, used for IT tasks such as configuration management, application deployment, intraservice orchestration, and provisioning.
Advantages of Ansible
Free: Ansible is an open-source tool.
Very simple to set up and use: No special coding skills are necessary to use Ansible’s playbooks (more on playbooks later).
Powerful: Ansible lets you model even highly complex IT workflows.
Flexible: You can orchestrate the entire application environment no matter where it’s deployed. You can also customize it based on your needs.
Agentless: You don’t need to install any other software or firewall ports on the client systems you want to automate. You also don’t have to set up a separate management structure.
Efficient: Because you don’t need to install any extra software, there’s more room for application resources on your server.
Prerequisite
Generate ssh key and copy the public key to ansible server and client machines
# ssh-keygen
# ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_rsa.pub root@<machine ip>
Step 1 — Installing Ansible
To get Ansible on CentOS 7, first ensure that the CentOS 7 EPEL repository is installed:
# sudo yum install epel-release
Once the repository is installed, install Ansible using yum:
# yum install ansible
Step 2 — Configuring Ansible Hosts
Ansible keeps track of all of the servers that it knows about through a “hosts” file. We need to set up this file first before we can begin to communicate with our other computers.
# vi /etc/ansible/hosts
[ansible_server]
alias ansible_ssh_host=your_server_ip
Save and exit
Now try to ping your list of machines using group name:
# ansible -m ping ansible_server or ansible -m ping all
alias | SUCCESS => {
"ansible_facts": {
"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python"
},
"changed": false,
"ping": "pong"
}
Step 3 — Create your first ansible playbook
# cat vim.yml
---
- hosts: ansible_server
remote_user: root
tasks:
- name: Installing vim
yum: pkg=vim
Now execute your playbook(Specify the group name where you want to execte the playbook)
# ansible-playbook -l ansible_server vim.yml
PLAY [ansible_server] ****************************************************************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] ***************************************************************************************************************
ok: [alias]
TASK [Installing vim] ****************************************************************************************************************
changed: [alias]
PLAY RECAP ***************************************************************************************************************************
alias : ok=2 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
Ansible is an open-source automation tool, or platform, used for IT tasks such as configuration management, application deployment, intraservice orchestration, and provisioning.
Advantages of Ansible
Free: Ansible is an open-source tool.
Very simple to set up and use: No special coding skills are necessary to use Ansible’s playbooks (more on playbooks later).
Powerful: Ansible lets you model even highly complex IT workflows.
Flexible: You can orchestrate the entire application environment no matter where it’s deployed. You can also customize it based on your needs.
Agentless: You don’t need to install any other software or firewall ports on the client systems you want to automate. You also don’t have to set up a separate management structure.
Efficient: Because you don’t need to install any extra software, there’s more room for application resources on your server.
Prerequisite
Generate ssh key and copy the public key to ansible server and client machines
# ssh-keygen
# ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_rsa.pub root@<machine ip>
Step 1 — Installing Ansible
To get Ansible on CentOS 7, first ensure that the CentOS 7 EPEL repository is installed:
# sudo yum install epel-release
Once the repository is installed, install Ansible using yum:
# yum install ansible
Step 2 — Configuring Ansible Hosts
Ansible keeps track of all of the servers that it knows about through a “hosts” file. We need to set up this file first before we can begin to communicate with our other computers.
# vi /etc/ansible/hosts
[ansible_server]
alias ansible_ssh_host=your_server_ip
Save and exit
Now try to ping your list of machines using group name:
# ansible -m ping ansible_server or ansible -m ping all
alias | SUCCESS => {
"ansible_facts": {
"discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python"
},
"changed": false,
"ping": "pong"
}
Step 3 — Create your first ansible playbook
# cat vim.yml
---
- hosts: ansible_server
remote_user: root
tasks:
- name: Installing vim
yum: pkg=vim
Now execute your playbook(Specify the group name where you want to execte the playbook)
# ansible-playbook -l ansible_server vim.yml
PLAY [ansible_server] ****************************************************************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] ***************************************************************************************************************
ok: [alias]
TASK [Installing vim] ****************************************************************************************************************
changed: [alias]
PLAY RECAP ***************************************************************************************************************************
alias : ok=2 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
