Ansible: Automation made simple

Projects these days typically involves a huge number of servers, which increases the complexity and load for Ops and Dev Teams. This makes typical tasks like deployment, configuration management or orchestration increasingly tricky and difficult.

To deal with such complexity, automation tools are needed. Automation allows engineers to scale beyond what they are humanly capable of, eg. GitHub Ops Engineers is responsible for 10,000 instances each.

Ansible is an example of a tool which brings the benefit of automation minus the traditional complexity associated with such tools.

I will cover the following concepts using Ansible.

1) Ad-hoc task-execution
2) Configuration Management (Infrastructure as Code)
3) Application Deployment
4) Multinode Orchestration

Transcript

1. An By Steve Teo 1 Ansible Automation made simple
2. Agenda Why, What, How Ansible
3. Agenda Why, What, How Ansible Key Concepts
4. Agenda Why, What, How Ansible Key Concepts Code and Demo
5. Why Ansible? As the ‘environment’ guy, I rather drink coffee than change 42 expiring passwords manually
6. Why Ansible? As the ‘environment’ guy, I need a way of standardizing every environment to reduce environment complexity
7. Why Ansible? As the ‘deployment’ guy, I need a way of automating deployments across multiple environments in a reliable, repeatable fashion
8. Why Ansible? As the ‘automation’ guy, I need an automation solution which works in a severely restricted environment
9. Into the Past
10. What is Ansible? Simple, Powerful open-source automation engine Written in Python Competes with Chef, Puppet, Salt Stack Since 2012 by Michael Deehan
11. What is Ansible? Ad-hoc Task Execution Configuration management Application Deployment Multi-Node Orchestration Cloud Provisioning
12. Open-Source github.com/ansible/ansible 968+ Contributors 9503+ ★
13. Low Barrier to Entry Operates over SSH Agentless => Low Footprint Control Machine: > Python 2.6 Managed Nodes: > Python 2.4 No Database
14. Master and Minions
15. How do I install it? From Source git clone git://github.com/ansible/ansible.git –recursive cd ./ansible source ./hacking/env-setup Package Managers sudo pip install ansible brew install ansible sudo yum install ansible Easiest Offline Non-Root Installation pip local + virtualenvwrapper + ansible => portable tarball
17. Key Concepts
18. Ansible Architecture Credits: http://terry.im/wiki/terry/Ansible.html
19. Playbooks Recipe book, consists of ‘plays’ => Mapping between tasks and hosts Declared in English and YAML => Say what, not how Executed in the order it was written => No dependency graph
20. Eg. Change Password
21. Eg. Install Packages
22. Inventory List of hosts in your ‘inventory’ in INI style Can be grouped together, groups of groups too
23. Task Structure arguments module documentation variable loop
24. Modules Ansible is battery packed Ships with over 250 modules, split into core and extras http://docs.ansible.com/modules.html Modules are idempotent, avoids a whole set of problems abs(abs(x)) ≡ abs(x)
25. Module Idempotence
26. Frequently Used Modules Packages apt, yum, homebrew, pkg Command Execution command, shell System cron, service, supervisor File operations copy, template, file, fetch synchronize, unarchive User Management user, group Network get_url
27. Windows Modules? Powered by PowerShell Remoting win_chocolatey Installs packages using chocolatey win_feature Installs and uninstalls Windows Features win_get_url Fetches a file from a given URL win_group Add and remove local groups win_msi Installs and uninstalls Windows MSI files win_ping A windows version of the classic ping module win_service Manages Windows services win_stat returns information about a Windows file win_updates Lists / Installs windows updates win_user Manages local Windows user accounts
28. Variables Can be defined in inventory => all, group, host level Can be defined inlined Can be defined from included files and roles Can have defaults in roles Can be overridden at the command line level Referenced in tasks or templates
29. Roles Organizational abstraction which separate tasks from the hosts that it needs to run on DRY, Can be reused and redistributed Convention over configuration approach Global Repository => https://galaxy.ansible.com/
31. Map Hosts to Roles
32. The Command Line ansible ansible-doc ansible-galaxy ansible-playbook ansible-pull ansible-vault
33. Code & Demo
34. Other Key Concepts
35. Multiple Environments ├── │ └── ├── │ ├── │ │ ├── │ │ ├── │ │ └── │ └── ├── │ ├── │ │ ├── │ │ ├── │ │ └── │ └──
36. Multiple Environments –
37. Role Dependencies http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_roles.html #role-dependencies
38. Rolling Deployment http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_delegation.html
39. Cloud Provisioning Provisioning modules Amazon Azure Digital Ocean Docker Google Linode OpenStack Rackspace VMWare http://docs.ansible.com/list_of_cloud_modules.html
40. Cloud Provisioning Inventory is never static Inventories can be specified as a script, manifest generated only at run-time http://docs.ansible.com/intro_dy namic_inventory.html
41. Best Practices http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_best_pra ctices.html https://www.reinteractive.net/posts/167- ansible-real-life-good-practices http://rosstuck.com/multistage- environments-with-ansible/ http://goodcode.io/blog/ansible-tips/
42. Ansible Tower
43. Ansible Tower Mission Control Dashboard Role Based Access Control Push Button Job Runs Job Scheduling Audit Trail Free only up to 10 Nodes
46. Thank You Any Questions? M: Steve Teo E: xylancer@gmail.com T: @kelltainer