What is Ansible?

Ansible is an open-source automation platform designed to automate IT tasks such as configuration management, application deployment, and task orchestration. It simplifies the process of managing large numbers of systems, ensuring that configurations remain consistent and that complex workflows can be automated across multiple machines.

Ansible was created by Michael DeHaan in 2012 and is now maintained by Red Hat. It uses simple, human-readable YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) files to define automation processes, making it easy for both system administrators and developers to write and manage automation scripts.

Unlike other automation tools, Ansible is agentless, meaning it doesn’t require software to be installed on the target systems. Instead, Ansible communicates with target machines via SSH (for Linux/Unix systems) or WinRM (for Windows systems), which makes it a highly efficient and straightforward solution for automating infrastructure and application tasks.

Key Features of Ansible:

• Agentless: Does not require installing an agent on managed systems, reducing the overhead and complexity of managing additional software.
• Declarative Syntax: Uses YAML files for easy-to-read playbooks that define the desired state of systems.
• Idempotency: Ensures that applying the same configuration multiple times will not cause errors, making it safe to execute playbooks repeatedly.
• Scalability: Suitable for managing small to large-scale infrastructure, from a single server to thousands of machines.

Ansible is used for automating tasks in both cloud environments (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and on-premise systems, making it versatile for various IT management needs.

What are the Major Use Cases of Ansible?

Ansible is versatile and can be used in a wide range of scenarios to automate IT tasks. Below are some of the most common use cases:

1. Configuration Management

Ansible is widely used for configuration management, where it ensures that servers and systems are set up with the desired configurations and software. By automating configuration, it reduces the chances of human error and makes it easier to manage large-scale infrastructure.

Example:

• Web Servers: Automating the installation and configuration of web servers (e.g., Apache, Nginx) across multiple machines.

2. Application Deployment

Ansible simplifies the process of deploying applications across multiple systems, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Using Ansible playbooks, users can automate everything from initial installation to configuration, and even rolling updates.

Example:

• CI/CD Pipelines: Integrating Ansible into Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to automatically deploy new versions of applications after successful code commits.

3. Orchestration

Ansible allows for orchestration of complex workflows, where multiple systems or services need to work together. It can manage service dependencies, automate multi-tier application deployments, and integrate with other automation tools.

Example:

• Multi-Tier Application Deployment: Orchestrating the deployment of applications that depend on a database, caching layer, and application servers, ensuring each part of the system is deployed in the correct sequence.

4. Cloud Provisioning

Ansible is widely used for cloud provisioning, automating the setup of cloud instances and infrastructure in providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. This includes tasks like spin-up virtual machines, configuring networks, and managing cloud resources.

Example:

• AWS EC2 Instances: Automating the provisioning of EC2 instances and configuring network settings (e.g., security groups, load balancers) across multiple regions.

5. Security and Compliance

Ansible can automate security configurations, including the application of patches, firewalls, and auditing configurations. It is frequently used to ensure systems are compliant with internal security policies or external regulations.

Example:

• Security Audits: Automatically ensuring that all servers have the latest security patches, proper firewall configurations, and compliant settings as per industry standards (e.g., HIPAA, PCI-DSS).

6. Network Automation

Ansible is also widely used for network automation, allowing users to automate configurations of network devices such as routers, switches, and firewalls. With Ansible, network configurations can be consistent and automated at scale.

Example:

• Network Configuration: Automating the configuration of routers and switches, managing VLANs, routing protocols, and firewall rules.

How Ansible Works Along with Architecture?

Ansible’s architecture is simple yet powerful, designed for ease of use and scalability. Below are the key components of Ansible’s architecture:

1. Ansible Controller (Master Node)

The controller is the machine from which Ansible is run. It is responsible for managing the playbooks, executing commands, and orchestrating automation tasks. The controller is where you define your automation scripts and run them.

• Ansible can be installed on the controller node and used to manage a large number of managed nodes.

2. Managed Nodes (Target Systems)

Managed nodes are the machines or systems that Ansible manages and configures. These systems could be Linux, Windows, or even network devices. Managed nodes do not need to have Ansible installed, as Ansible communicates with them through SSH (Linux/Unix) or WinRM (Windows).

3. Inventory

An inventory is a file or dynamic source that contains information about the managed nodes. The inventory defines which machines Ansible will manage and allows grouping nodes based on roles, environments, or other criteria.

Example:

[web_servers]
web1.example.com
web2.example.com

[db_servers]

db1.example.com

4. Modules

Ansible uses modules to perform specific tasks such as installing software, copying files, managing services, and configuring systems. Modules are the core of Ansible automation, and you can call them within tasks in playbooks.

• Example modules: apt (for managing packages on Debian-based systems), yum (for RedHat-based systems), service (for managing services), and copy (for copying files).

5. Playbooks

A playbook is a YAML file that defines the automation tasks. Playbooks contain one or more plays, which define the tasks to run against a group of managed nodes. Playbooks provide a way to define the desired state of systems and enforce configuration consistency.

Example:

- name: Install Nginx
  hosts: web_servers
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Install nginx
      apt:
        name: nginx
        state: present
    - name: Ensure nginx is running
      service:
        name: nginx
        state: started

6. Ansible Galaxy

Ansible Galaxy is an online repository for reusable Ansible roles. Roles are pre-packaged sets of tasks, templates, and variables that can be used to automate specific tasks, such as setting up a database server or configuring firewalls.

Basic Workflow of Ansible

The basic workflow of Ansible involves the following steps:

1. Write Playbooks

• Playbooks define the desired configuration or tasks to automate. They are written in YAML, which is human-readable and easy to understand.

2. Create an Inventory

• The inventory file contains a list of the managed nodes. It can be static or dynamic, depending on whether you want to manually specify nodes or pull them dynamically from a cloud provider.

3. Run the Playbook

• To run a playbook, you use the ansible-playbook command, specifying the inventory and playbook file.

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini playbook.yml

4. Ansible Connects to Managed Nodes

• Ansible connects to the target nodes via SSH or WinRM and executes the tasks defined in the playbook.

Execute Tasks

• Ansible runs the tasks defined in the playbook, which may include installing packages, copying files, or restarting services. It uses modules to perform these tasks efficiently.

5. Reporting and Output

• Once the playbook completes, Ansible outputs the results, showing whether each task was successful, skipped, or failed. The results can be reviewed for troubleshooting and verification.

Step-by-Step Getting Started Guide for Ansible

Follow these steps to get started with Ansible:

Step 1: Install Ansible

Ansible can be installed on most systems using package managers.

• Linux (Ubuntu):

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ansible

• macOS:

brew install ansible

• Windows: You can use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) or Docker to install Ansible on Windows.

Step 2: Set Up Your Inventory

Create an inventory file (inventory.ini) that lists the machines you want to manage:

[web_servers]
192.168.1.10
192.168.1.11

[db_servers]

192.168.1.12

Step 3: Create a Playbook

Create a simple playbook (install_nginx.yml) to install and configure Nginx on your web servers:

- name: Install and configure Nginx
  hosts: web_servers
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Install Nginx
      apt:
        name: nginx
        state: present
    - name: Start Nginx service
      service:
        name: nginx
        state: started

Step 4: Run the Playbook

Run the playbook using the ansible-playbook command:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini install_nginx.yml

Step 5: Verify Results

After running the playbook, verify the Nginx installation by accessing the web server in a browser or using curl to check if Nginx is running.

Step 6: Expand Automation

As you become comfortable with Ansible, begin expanding your automation by adding more tasks, setting up variables, and automating more complex workflows, such as application deployments or cloud provisioning.

Ansible is a powerful tool that simplifies the process of managing and automating IT tasks. Whether you are provisioning servers, configuring systems, deploying applications, or ensuring compliance, Ansible helps to streamline these processes. By following the steps above, you can start automating your infrastructure efficiently and begin implementing it in your daily workflows.

The post Understanding Ansible: Use Cases, Architecture, Workflow, and Getting Started Guide appeared first on scmGalaxy.

It is clear that, we live in the age of microservices, where automation is not a nice-to-have anymore. Cloud provisioning is an important element of the modern cloud computing model and it became an important to do list in every operation. There are so many different type of automation tools for job done. Those tools will help us in saving time and increasing the performance and accuracy of provisioning and configuration management processes that lead us to no human error process.

In this blog, we will discuss about one the most popular automation tool “Ansible” and also benefits of cloud automation with Ansible. Let’s first look at what is Ansible?

What is Ansible?

Ansible is an open-source automation tool, or you can also called platform, used for IT tasks such as configuration management, application deployment, intraservice orchestration, and provisioning. Automation is crucial these days, with IT environments that are too complex and often need to scale too quickly for system administrators and developers to keep up if they had to do everything manually.

In simple words, it frees up time and increases efficiency. And also it is rapidly rising to the top in the world of automation tools.

Ansible provides the following capabilities as per:

Provisioning: setting up the environment and also resources.

Configuration management: managing all configuration files.

Application deployment: deploying of application with human readable playbooks.

Continuous delivery: creating a CI/CD pipeline.

Security automation: using modules, roles and playbooks to automate security.

Orchestration: combining all different configurations and automation tasks under one umbrella.

Ansible is one of the most popular automation tool among Software engineers, Ansible is the first choice for the Automation process, and also Ansible is called as “Darling” of DevOps. Ansible does a great job of automating Docker and operationalizing the process of building and deploying containers.

If you’re someone from a traditional IT system, for example, it can be hard to add container-tooling functionality. But Ansible removes the need to do processes manually.

Future in Ansible

As we discuss earlier using Ansible with Docker simplify your processes by allowing you to work with containers and to automate all that work, It’s no wonder the Ansible-Docker combination is so popular. And learning how to use Ansible with Docker won’t just benefit your organization, it also benefits you on your Payscale, according to Payscale, the average salary of a developer with Ansible skills is $130,000 per year, and some developers earn even more.

According to Dice, Ansible is the highest-paying DevOps skill. Ansible is probably the only widely-used automation tool that allows us to describe the whole deployment uniformly, Ansible Collections play a central role in Ansible’s flexibility. They provide, among other things, integrations with cloud providers that unlock cloud-management capabilities.

So Ansible is not going anywhere and have lots of job profile and stable career with Ansible.

If you want learn more about Ansible and want a Certification Course of Ansible I would like to suggest you DevOpsSchool.com, one of the top institute for Ansible Certification Training Course to kick start your career in the field of Automation.

I hope you find this particular blog helpful and informative about Ansible.

Thank You!!

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In the past, automation tools like Chef and Puppet have been widely used, but in the last few years Ansible has emerged as a very compelling tool with many advantages for administrators. If you’re in IT, you must be heard about Ansible. CIO calls it the DevOps “darling” for software automation, in recent times Ansible has come from nowhere to be the No. 1 choice for software automation in many organizations.

What is Ansible?

Ansible is an open-source automation tool, which is used in IT tasks such as application deployment, configuration management, application deployment, intracervical orchestration. In other words, it frees up time and increases efficiency.

Benefits 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.
• 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.

Why learn Ansible?

Ansible is associate degree open supply configuration management, software system provisioning, and application preparation tool. Its application is found in several Unix-like systems. In addition, it will be organized to figure absolutely with Microsoft Windows moreover. Ansible is gaining huge attention worldwide because the tool provides large and dynamic productivity capabilities like few others.

In 2017, Ansible swollen its user base by over five hundredth. Associate degree integrated Ansible course guarantees a rewarding career to beginners and professionals alike within the increasing world development landscape. The tool provides a strong mechanism to automatize subtle multi-tier IT systems. Hence, it’s gaining traction among technology giants because of a good form of evolving automation challenges.

The rising interest during this field has crystal rectifier to over 72,000 active members of Ansible meetups globally.

Ansible training institute in Hyderabad

Ansible training and certification program by DevOpsSchool is one of the Top Ansible training in Hyderabad, where we offer you both in online and offline classroom mode by top experts/trainers. This Ansible certification training program is designed especially for beginners to help them to understand the advanced level concepts of Ansible such as Ansible Configuration Management. In this Ansible Certification Course you will learn to create your own playbooks and configuring network devices on the platform of Linux or Windows.

Our institute have also multiple Ansible training and Certification venue in top cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore and more.   This Ansible Certification Training Course comes up with real world working experience by live project with Ansible. Our support team and experts are always there and ready to clarify all your doubts and questions throughout the training.

After successful completion of Ansible certification training program online, participants will easily crack Red Hat Certified Specialist exam (EX407) and become a Red Hat Certified Specialist.

Conclusion

Nowadays automation is taking a big part of making DevOps done. Manual processes are the enemy. They slow things down, produce space for Kill, and add bloat to come. As a result, demonstrating you’re ready to automatize systems preparation is a vital a part of changing into a DevOps professional. Red Hat’s Ansible may be a common open supply project targeted on automation and configuration management.

Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation enables DevOps to show their expertise with Ansible. After getting a strong foundation of skills with knowledge, this certification going to be an excellent addition to your resume and have a good career with this certification with Ansible.

Interested in Ansible training? Try Ansible Certification Training Course by DevOpsSchool.com

I hope you like this particular information about Ansible training in Hyderabad and will help you choose better path ahead.

Thank you!!

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Terraform and Ansible are two popular frontline line DevOps tools that provision and configure servers. Ansible is the more mature between the two, originating in early 2012 and Terraform is a Hashicorp product and was first introduce in 2014.  As the DevOps industry is gaining momentum, so also Ansible and Terraform gaining their popularity with this trend. Both the tools used in deploying the code and infrastructure, in simple Ansible acts as a configuration management solution, Terraform is a service orchestration tool.

In this blog, we point our focus on Terraform vs Ansible, a discussion that is highly dominating the current DevOps market. Let’s first known about these tools:

What is Ansible?

Ansible is an open-source automation tool, or you can also called platform, used for IT tasks such as configuration management, application deployment, intraservice orchestration, and provisioning. Automation is crucial these days, with IT environments that are too complex and often need to scale too quickly for system administrators and developers to keep up if they had to do everything manually.

In simple words, it frees up time and increases efficiency. And also it is rapidly rising to the top in the world of automation tools.

Benefits 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.
• Powerful: Ansible lets you model even highly complex IT workflows.
• Flexible: Orchestrate the entire application environment no matter where it’s deployed. You can also customize it based on your needs.
• Agentless: No 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: You don’t need to install any extra software, there’s more room for application resources on your server.

What is Terraform?

Terraform is an open source, CLI-based infrastructure as code tool created by Hashicorp.

Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool that helps you to build, change, and infrastructure safely and efficiently. This process includes low-level components such as compute instances, storage, and networking, as well as high-level components such as DNS entries, SaaS features, etc. Terraform can manage both existing service providers and custom in-house solutions.

Benefits of Using Terraform

So now you know what Terraform is and how it works, let’s take a look on the top reasons why you should start using Terraform today:

• Improve multi-cloud infrastructure deployment
• Automated infrastructure management
• Infrastructure as code
• Reduced development costs
• Reduced time to provision

What is the difference between terraform and Ansible?

In this section, let’s check the difference between the two. Meanwhile both are designed for similar purposes, both have definitely laid a foundation for lifecycle management frameworks. Now, both our players in their battle has placed their cards on the table. Let us find out their differences on some of major factors:

Conclusion

The possibility of a perfect answer on “Why Terraform” or “Why not Ansible” depends mainly on your requirements. Both the tools have so many similarities and also some fair differences as well. So, which one is the best? From a practical perspective, it is advisable to use Ansible for configuration management and Terraform for orchestration. The primary purpose of Terraform is orchestration, and it is considerably intuitive.

Also from career aspect, opportunities for these skilled professionals are increasing significantly with huge scope for career growth.

According to Indeed.com, the average salary of a professional of these skills is $177,530 per annum.

Both Ansible and Terraform are the leading data analytics tool which is adopted by many MNCs worldwide. With this, the demand for the professionals is gradually.

Below you can watch and learn Ansible and Terraform Tutorials

Ansible Advance Tutorial – Intro, Adhoc Command, Inventory, Playbook

Terraform Basic Tutorial with Demo

Hope you find this answer helpful.

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Recent studies shows that the global DevOps market size reached USD 5.8 billion in 2021 and is projected to attain USD 14.97 billion by 2026 with a CAGR of 19.1% during the forecast period.

There are a number of latest DevOps configuration tools such as Chef, Puppet, and Ansible with various features available in the market. So, there is an inevitable need for the comparison of various configuration tools to identify the best tool for the success of DevOps projects.

What is Ansible?

Ansible is a latest configuration management tool which makes configuration management and coordination system of computer very easy to user.

What is Puppet?

Puppet is the oldest version of configuration management system and hard to understand for user.

What is Chef?

Chef is newer than Puppet but older version than Ansible so it is easier than Puppet but not than Ansible configuration system.

Here we do comparison of the top configuration tools including Ansible, Puppet and Chef:

First of all these tools are simple to use and robust capabilities to automate complex multi-tier IT application environment.

The differences between Ansible, Chef and Puppet are portrayed on the basis of different factors including Availability, Configuration Language, Setup and Installation, Ease of Management, Scalability, Interoperability, Tool Capabilities and Pricing:

IT departments with a strong DevOps workflow deploy software 200 times more frequently, with 2,555 times faster lead times, recover 24 times faster, and have three times lower change failure rates.

Conclusion

As you can see above, chef and puppet are the old players with the time whereas Ansible is new players in the market, and Ansible looks very promising with the growing trend. So, to conclude, all the three tools have their own advantages and categories in which they are better than the other. My only intention here is to help you in your decision making. So, it is necessary that you choose the appropriate tool which can be fitted according to your needs.

If you want to know more about Ansible, you can check out this blog on Ansible, Puppet and Chef with complete information.

If you are curious to learn and make a good career with this skill then I would suggest you please check out DevOpsschool.com.

The post Which is better for automation: Ansible, Chef or Puppet? appeared first on scmGalaxy.

What is Ansible?

Ansible is an open-source automation tool, or you can also called platform, used for IT tasks such as configuration management, application deployment, intraservice orchestration, and provisioning. Automation is crucial these days, with IT environments that are too complex and often need to scale too quickly for system administrators and developers to keep up if they had to do everything manually.

In other words, it frees up time and increases efficiency. And also it is rapidly rising to the top in the world of automation tools.

Let’s take a look on some of the features of Ansible

• Configuration Management
• Application Deployment
• Orchestration
• Security and Compliance
• Cloud Provisioning

Now that we have seen what Ansible is, let us find out the various Benefits of Ansible.

Benefits 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.
• 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.

Advantages of Using Ansible especially with Docker

Ansible does a great job of automating Docker and operationalizing the process of building and deploying containers. If you’re someone from a traditional IT system, for example, it can be hard to add container-tooling functionality. But Ansible removes the need to do processes manually.

There are four main advantages of using Ansible with Docker:

• Portability/Flexibility
• Auditability
• Management of Entire Environments
• Similar Syntax

Conclusion

As we discuss earlier using Ansible with Docker simplify your processes by allowing you to work with containers and to automate all that work, It’s no wonder the Ansible-Docker combination is so popular. And learning how to use Ansible with Docker won’t just benefit your organization, it also benefits you on your Payscale, according to Payscale, the average salary of a developer with Ansible skills is $110,000 per year, and some developers earn even more. According to Dice, Ansible is the highest-paying DevOps skill.

If you find this article helpful and you grab any informative knowledge about Ansible and if you also want to learn Ansible skill, then I would glad to suggest you the best online institute to learn and training of Ansible where they provide you the best trainer and guidance with experience of more than 10 years of this field.

Recommended institutes

devOpsschool.com

scmgalaxy.com

bestdevOps.com

I hope this Blog will be helpful for you!!!

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Another major use of variables is running a command and using the result of that command to save the result into a variable

- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - name: Ansible register variable basic example
    shell: "find *.txt"
    args:
      chdir: "/Users/mdtutorials2/Documents/Ansible"
    register: find_output

  - debug:
      var: find_output

#
- hosts: all
  tasks:
  - name: Ansible register with_items example
    shell: "find *.txt"
    args:
      chdir: "/Users/mdtutorials2/Documents/Ansible"
    register: with_output

  - shell: "cp {{ item }} {{item}}_bkp"
    with_items:
      - "{{ with_output.stdout_lines }}"

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##### Step 1 – Create your inventory file with #####

$ vi inventory
35.154.85.120 ansible_user=root ansible_ssh_private_key_file=remote.pem
35.154.85.120 ansible_user=root ansible_ssh_private_key_file=remote.pem

##### Step 2 – Create templates directory #####

$ mkdir templates
$ vi templates/index.j2

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<h1> Welcome to DevOpsSchool.com Ansible Training</h1>
<h3> This is Deployed in OS Family - {{ ansible_os_family }} </h3>
<h3> This is Deployed in OS Family - {{ ansible_hostname }} </h3>
<h3> Company Name - {{ companyname }} </h3>
companyname

</body>
</html>

<strong>##### Step 3 – Create a playbook.yaml#####</strong>

---
- name: This sets up an httpd webserver
hosts: all
remote_user: ec2-user
become: yes
vars:
ansible_ssh_private_key_file: remote.pem
companyname: DevOpsSchool.com
pack: httpd
tasks:
- name: Install the httpd apps
yum: name={{ pack }}
- name: Deploy configuration File
template: src=templates/index.j2 dest=/var/www/html/index.html
- name: start the httpd service
service: name={{ pack }} state=started

##### Step 4 – Last comamds to execute #####

$ ansible-playbook -i inventory httpd.yaml

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Ansible can’t run playbooks locally without ssh if ansible_connection=local is defined in the hosts file, although it can run playbooks locally without ssh with connection: local in the playbook or with flag –connection=local.

# # # # # # # # # # # # Method 1 # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

ansible 127.0.0.1 -m file -a "dest=/opt/a.txt mode=600 state=touch"
ansible 127.0.0.1 -m file -a "dest=/opt/a.txt mode=600 state=file"

# # # # # # # # # # # # Method 2 # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

Inventory file
127.0.0.1 ansible_connection=local
localhost ansible_connection=local

# # # # # # # # # # # # Method 3 # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

---

- name: run the playbook tasks on the localhost
hosts: 127.0.0.1
connection: local
become: yes
tasks:

- name: print out the hostname of target
command: hostname

- name: ensure aptitude is installed
command: apt-get -y install aptitude

- name: update the apt package index i.e. apt-get update
apt: update_cache=yes

- name: upgrade system packages i.e. apt-get upgrade
apt: upgrade=yes

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1. Write a Ansible Playbook to create a group called “deploy”

2. Write a Ansible Playbook to create a user called “deploy-user” which is part of group called “group” and with /bin/bash shell.

3. Write a Ansible Playbook to install package named “httpd” in RHEL/centos.

4. Write a Ansible Playbook to start and enable the service named “httpd”

5. Write a Ansible Playbook to create a file called “index.html” in /var/www/html with some dummy html contents.

6. Write a Ansible Playbook to reboot a self machine.

7. Write a Ansible Playbook to install a package called “git”, “wget”.

8. Write a Ansible Playbook to clone git repo. thttps://github.com/scmgalaxy/ansible-role-template

9. Now Merge all Top Playbook into one and run and verify

The post Ansible Playbook Lab & Excercise – Part 2 appeared first on scmGalaxy.

1. Write a Ansible Adhoc Commands to create a group called “deploy”

2. Write a Ansible Adhoc Commands to create a user called “deploy-user” which is part of group called “group” and with /bin/bash shell.

3. Write a Ansble Adhoc commands install package named “httpd” in RHEL/centos.

4. Write a Ansible Adhoc commands to start and enable the service named “httpd”

5. Write a Ansible commands to create a file called “index.html” in /var/www/html with some dummy html contents.

6. Write a Ansible commands to reboot a self machine.

7. Write a Ansible commands to install a package called “git”, “wget”.

8. Write a Ansible Adhoc commands to clone git repo. thttps://github.com/scmgalaxy/ansible-role-template

The post Ansible Adhoc Commands Lab & Excercise – Part 1 appeared first on scmGalaxy.

Source – http://hub.scalr.com/blog/top-questions-on-server-configuration-management-tools-chef-puppet-and-ansible-2

As a quick recap, configuration management tools enable companies to standardize and automate their infrastructure. Through standardization, you can build systems that are platform independent (i.e. instead of relying on AMIs or provider specific toolsets). These tools also make it easy reproduce servers for scaling or testing, and recover from disaster quickly by defining a proper application state. For example, if servers are not in that defined state when each server is checked, they are restored to their proper state. In addition, this standardization makes it easy to onboard new developers.

While the language across configuration management tools is different, the concepts are the same. At the fundamental level in each configuration tool, a resource represents a part of the system and its desired state, such as a package that should be installed, a service that should be running, or a file that should be generated.

In Chef, a recipe is a collection of resources that describes a particular configuration or policy. These collections are called playbooks in Ansible, and manifests in Puppet. These collections describe everything that is required to configure part of a system. Collections install and configure software components, manage files, deploy applications, and execute other recipes. We go into more detail in our blog post here.

Here are the top questions we got from the community:

How is the concept of master/agent configuration better (or not) than agentless, when it comes to infrastructure as code?

Chef and Puppet are master/agent configuration systems, while Ansible is an agentless system. The historic argument is that the agent-based installation process is difficult –  you have to set up the master, and then set up the agents on your nodes so that they know about the master. If you’ve got servers with diverse linux distros, on different versions of Windows, etc., installation can get tricky. Though, because they’re logging every few minutes, agent-based systems are powerful for advanced monitoring. At the end of the day this really is based on personal preference and what company requires. If your infrastructure is beefy and heavily standardized, installation on nodes isn’t complicated so use agent-based systems. If you have servers that run Python, try agentless.

Are these configuration management systems like MicroSoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) but used for local and cloud?

This is like MS SCCM, but open-source and paid for per node. For those who haven’t used it, MicroSoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) is used for infrastructure provisioning, monitoring, and automating workflow processes (usually sysadmin stuff). SCCM is a powerhouse in the enterprise space. While it can manage end clients on non-Windows servers, the server console portion of SCCM must be hosted and run on a Windows server machine. The reason other orchestration/configuration systems win here is that you pay on a per-node basis and you’re not totally tied into Windows Server’s licensing agreements. In other words, open-source vs proprietary. And with Chef/Puppet/Ansible the thinking is more in resources as opposed to SCCM, which is more in files and terminal commands.

An attendee commented on using SCCM:

 “We really like Ansible because of the none-agent requirement. For Windows patching we utilize System Center Configuration Manager, and even though System Center can provide patching to Linux we have run into issues with SCCM agent staying healthy and running on our Linux systems. We have also run into when the SCCM admins have made changes it broke SCCM agent on a majority of our Linux servers. Our Linux patching process has been highly manual up to this point but we are seeking to automate this to free up staff time to be better directed at other support tasks, which is why were are reviewing several solutions. The non-agent aspect is highly desirable in our situation because of past experience with SCCM agent. I just wanted to provide that feedback so others that have not experienced agent issues with other deployment solutions may want to keep that in mind.”

If we have to pick a tool dependent on whether we deploy on cloud or on-premise – which of these tools would be a better choice?

We would recommend looking into network access requirements for each tool. If you have an agent that checks in periodically with a central master management piece, that is likely to work better then SSH which requires direct path / path through lots of proxies. 

One attendee mentioned in the comments: “[In regards to] SSH vs Agent – Agent is more secure where SSH not an option.”

What happened to cfengine? This tool used to be mentioned alongside Chef and Puppet. 
Version 3 of cfengine is a complete revamp, but it compared to other configuration management tools the brand and community outreach isn’t strong, and does little the others don’t do better.

How does StackStorm compare to the other orchestrators being reviewed?
StackStorm labels itself more of an automation platform, or a DevOps workflow tool that handles provisioning and configuring servers but also leans on automatic and event driven services that plugs into Jenkins and other CI/CD workflows.

From one attendee that had used all three: “For us, getting the Server engineers to adopt Chef has been very difficult. It grew organically on the Dev side of the house. Ansible appears to be something that guys without Dev skills could pick up more easily. Just [my] perception.”

Can I run tasks in parallel with Ansible rather than running it serially (say 50 servers being updated with a patch)?

The default method is to run each task across all servers in parallel, meaning that it will run the first task (e.g. installing Git) on all servers in a group, and once all servers respond with a success, failure, or unchanged response, Ansible will move to the next task on all servers. It doesn’t run on a server, wait, move on to the next, it will run on all servers at once over SSH. If you want to deploy updates in batches, you can run a percentage of servers in a group (e.g. 50%, by listing it in the playbook as serial: 50%).

An attendee made this comment as we mentioned Ansible:

“I have attended a presentation from RedHat regarding Ansible that states [that Ansible scales well]. They have large scale hosting companies that on the fly spin up servers and perform patching for their servers via Ansible. The one mentioned had over 50,000 servers and it seemed to handle the volume / scale fine. I of course don’t know everything about Puppet or Chef or Salt, but one thing I find really nice about Ansible is the ability to perform rolling updates / tasks. So if you say had 1000 servers you can say you want to run 10% or 100 at a time and keep it rolling until all 1000 are done. It can be stated by percentage or defined number…I am sure I sound a bit biased but one of the main reasons Ansible is high on our list right now is the fact that it is agentless and does not really consume resources.”

With Ansible, how can we handle the security implications about allowing passwordless ssh to a root account on all systems? What mechanisms are there for access control and auditing?

There are definitely security implications if you are going to allow passwordless ssh. So it’s on the company to ensure that security groups or NSGs are well defined. We should also mention that the passwordless ssh is only enabled on the machine you are running Ansible commands and playbooks from, so if anything consider that workstation to be your weak point. Make sure SSH access is only permissible through your IP. As an alternative solution to connecting via SSH, if you use docker, Ansible allows you to deploy playbooks directly into Docker containers using the local Docker client. All you need is a user inside that container.

Does ansible run single-threaded or is it addressing multiple servers in a group asynchronously?
Ansible runs on each host in parallel. This means that it attempts to run your tasks on all servers defined at the top of the playbook before moving on to the next task.

One user said in regards to all three tools: “Ansible seems better for “orchestration” and Puppet/Chef are really good for “Configuration Management”.  Ansible can be used to stop applications and databases and then run Puppet and then start applications and databases.”

Lastly, we got a surprise question from the audience on Jenkins, a CI/CD pipeline tool that can be used in conjunction with tools like Chef to completely automate the infrastructure behind your applications.

What is the alternative of Jenkins?
While we recommend Jenkins, If you’re a Ruby shop, Capistrano is geared towards your deployments. If you live in the AWS world, you can try using the CodeCommit/CodeDeploy/CodePipeline toolset. If you’re looking for a provider agnostic solution, CircleCI is great. If your workflows revolve around Atlassian, try Bamboo. 

If you are unsure of what CI/CD pipeline tool to use, or how they work, we will be hosting a webinar on Jenkins as part of our on-going series on infrastructure-as-code.

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Top 5 Configuration Management Tools

Puppet

In computing, Puppet is an open-source configuration management utility. It runs on many Unix-like systems as well as on Microsoft Windows, and includes its own declarative language to describe system configuration.

Puppet is produced by Puppet Labs, founded by Luke Kanies in 2005. It is written in Ruby and released as free software under the GNU General Public License (GPL) until version 2.7.0 and the Apache License 2.0 after that.

What started out as a popular DevOps tool has quickly become a movement. Written in Ruby, like Chef, Puppet also comes in both an open source and enterprise version. However, where Chef has a healthy offering of features across both open source and enterprise versions, Puppet has placed the majority of its feature set into enterprise status. Features that the open source version comes with include provisioning (Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine), configuration management (operating systems and applications) plus 2,000+ pre-built configurations on Puppet Forge. Considerably more features are available for the enterprise version, including the open source features plus graphical user interface, event inspector (visualize infrastructure changes), supported modules, and provisioning (VMware VMs). Configuration management (discovery, user accounts), orchestration, task automation, role-based access control (with external authentication support) are also included. Puppet enterprise has a unified cross-platform installer of all components and support.

Chef

Offered as both an open source and enterprise product, Chef is a powerful tool for full IT infrastructure configuration management. With open source Chef at the heart of both offerings, shared features include a flexible and scalable automation platform, access to 800+ reusable cookbooks and integration with leading cloud providers. Chef also offers enterprise platform support, including Windows and Solaris, and allows you to create, bootstrap and manage OpenStack clouds. It has easy installation with ‘one-click’ Omnibus Installer, automatic system discovery with Ohai, text-based search capabilities and multiple environment support. Other notable features inclyde the “Knife” command line interface, “Dry Run” mode for testing potential changes, and the ability to manage 10,000+ nodes on a single Chef server. Features only available in the enterprise version of Chef include availablility as a hosted service, enhanced management console, centralized activity and resource reporting, as well as “Push” command and control client runs. Multi-tenancy, role-based access control (RBAC), high availability installation support and verification, along with centralized authentication using LDAP or Active Directory are included with Chef enterprise.

Ansible

Ansible is a model-driven configuration management tool that leverages SSH to improve security and simplify management. In addition to configuration management, it is capable of automating app deployment (even multi-tier deployment), workflow orchestration and cloud provisioning, hence the company likes the tool to be categorized as an “orchestration engine.” Ansible is built on five design principles including ease of use (doesn’t require writing scripts or custom code), low learning curve (both for sysadmins and developers), comprehensive automation (allowing you to automate almost anything in your environment), efficiency (since it runs on OpenSSH it doesn’t rely on memory or CPU resources), and security (it is inherently more secure because it doesn’t require an agent, additional ports or root level daemons). As many other open source projects, Ansible has a paid product that comes in the form of a web UI called Ansible Tower.

CFEngine

One of the earliest full-featured configuration management systems out there, CFEngine has gone through several iterations and maintained relevance as OS have gone from the local data center to the cloud. At the heart of the infrastructure automation framework, CFEngine is also a modeling and monitoring compliance engine, capable of sitting on a small footprint. As recommended by CFEngine, steps toward identifying an initial desired state include: 1) model the desired state of your environment; 2) simulate configuration changes before committing them; 3) confirm the desired state and set for automatic self-healing; 4) collect reports on the differences between actual and desired states. CFEngine has a library of reusable data-driven models that will help users model their desired states. These infrastructure patterns are designed to be reusable across the Enterprise.

Salt

As part of a larger, enterprise ready application, the configuration management piece of Salt is as robust and feature-full as would be expected. Built upon the remote execution core, execution of the system occurs on “minions” which receives commands from the central Salt master and replies with the results of said commands. Salt support simultaneous configuration of tens of thousands of hosts. Based upon host “states”, no programming is required to write the configuration files, which are small and easy to understand, that help identify the state of each host. Additionally, for those who do program, or admins who want to have more control and familiarity with their configuration files, any language can be used to render the configurations.

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