Ansible Setup

Optional if you want to install a virtual environment, but not required

**Download and install Miniconda:

curl -OL https://repo.continuum.io/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh bash Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh

**You will be prompted several times during the installation process. Review the terms and conditions and select “yes” for each prompt.

*Restart your shell session for the changes to your PATH to take effect.

exec bash -l

*Create a new virtual environment for Ansible:

conda create -n ansible-dev python=3

*Activate the new environment:

conda activate ansible-dev

*Check your Python version:

python --version

Ubuntu 18.04

sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo apt-add-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible
sudo apt install ansible
ansible-galaxy collection install community.general

• Verify that Ansible is installed:

ansible --version

Configure Ansible

By default, Ansible’s configuration file location is /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg. In most cases, the default configurations are enough to get you started using Ansible. In this example, you will use Ansible’s default configurations.

• To view a list of all current configs available to your control node, use the ansible-config command line utility.

ansible-config list

Create an Ansible Inventory

Ansible keeps track of its managed nodes using an inventory file located in /etc/ansible/hosts. In the inventory file, you can group your managed nodes and use these groups to target specific hosts that make up your infrastructure

• Add your nodes to the default inventory file.

File: /etc/ansible/hosts

host file with alias for server addresses

[webserver]
server1 ansible_ssh_host=192.168.1.1

[fileserver]
server2 ansible_ssh_host=192.168.2.2

Host file with just ip addresses

[webserver]
192.168.20.222

[fileservers]
192.168.1.1

Each bracketed label denotes an Ansible group . Grouping your nodes by function will make it easier to run commands against the correct set of nodes.

Note

The /etc/ansible directory will not exist by default in some environments. If you find that this is the case, create it manually with the following command:

mkdir /etc/ansible/

If you are using a non-standard SSH port on your nodes, include the port after a colon on the same line within your hosts file (203.0.113.1:2222).

Test connection to server

ansible all -u root -m ping --private-key ~/.ssh/ansible

Create a playbook

nano server.yml

---                                                                                 ---
- hosts: webserver
 tasks:
   - name: install apache
     package:
       name: apache2
       state: latest
- hosts: fileserver
 tasks:
   - name: install nginx
     package:
       name: nginx
       state: latest