Ansible¶

Ansible is an open-source IT automation engine, which can remove drudgery from your work life, and will also dramatically improve the scalability, consistency, and reliability of your IT environment.

uses SSH to push commands
no-client software (agent) needed
yaml based environment description (playbooks)

_images/guide_ansible_1.png

source sysadmincasts.com

Installation¶

pip install ansible

Usage¶

curate /etc/ansible/hosts - inventory on ansible.com
make sure you can access each and every host via SSH
perform ad-hoc commands - ad-hoc commands on ansible.com
- ansible -m ping all
- ansible all -a "/bin/uname -a"
- ansible atlanta -a "/sbin/reboot" -f 10
- ansible atlanta -m copy -a "src=/etc/hosts dest=/tmp/hosts"
curate playbooks

Example playbook¶

# basic setup for all our containers
---
- hosts: container
  become: true
  tasks:
  - include_tasks: ../ubuntu/basics.yml
  - include_tasks: ../ubuntu/monit.yml
  - include_tasks: ../ubuntu/certificates.yml
  - include_tasks: ../ubuntu/update_packages.yml

Example task¶

---
- name: set timezone to Europe/Berlin
  timezone:
    name: Europe/Berlin
- name: Install basic Applications
  apt:
    name: ['git', vim', 'curl', 'tree', 'htop', 'pv', 'stress', 'wget', 'build-essential', 'ruby', 'rsync', 'ufw', 'mosh', 'unattended-upgrades']
    state: latest
- name: ufw allow ssh
  command: ufw allow proto udp from 192.168.0.0/24 to any port 22
- name: ufw allow mosh
  command: ufw allow proto udp from 192.168.0.0/24 to any port 60001
- name: Generate locales (EN)
  command: locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
- name: Generate locales (DE)
  command: locale-gen de_DE.UTF-8
- name: Setup unattended-upgrades
  command: dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades --default-priority
- name: Copy unattended-upgrade settings to client
  copy: src=../files/unattended-upgrades/10periodic dest=/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic owner=root group=root mode=0644