Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Automated deployment with Ansible Juergen Brendel [email protected] @BrendelConsult 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Summary ● Configuration management background ● Ansible intro ● Unified development, test and deployment environments ● Ansible and the cloud ● Contributing to Ansible 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Configuration Management: Why and how 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult What configuration? ● System packages ● Settings ● Users/groups ● Applications 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Arcane magic Configuring servers How do you configure a server? Manual instructions Scripts CM tools Automation! 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Ensure all system packages are updated. CM Tools Describe the desired state Ensure that user “xyz” exists. Ensure package “apache” is installed. Have latest sources: Clone repo, update if it exists already. Ensure package “postgres” v9.1 is installed. Ensure DB “app_data” exists with password “****”. 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult CM Tools variety ● Puppet (2005) ● Chef (2009) ● Salt (2011) ● Ansible (2012) ● Fabric ● Scripts “powerful, feature-rich, enterprisy” “simple, fast, good for most things” “not really CM tools” 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Ansible: Intro and key concepts 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Ansible overview ● “Orchestration engine” for CM and deployment ● Written in Python ● Uses YAML ● “Playbooks” ● Config specs or explicit commands ● Linux and Windows 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Ansible simplicity Key points: – No central configuration server – No key management – No agent to install on target machine – Explicit order Requirements: – Need SSH access (with key or password) – Need Python installed on target machine 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Ansible architecture Server 1 Server 2 Server 3 Server 4 Server 5 Your laptop 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Modules Hundreds of them. They know how to do stuff... - Command - Shell - Script - Copy - Sync - Templates - Line ops - Install packages - Users and groups - Networking - Services - Repositories - Message queues - Monitoring - Notification - Web servers - Database servers - Cloud infrastructure 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult How does it work? Server Your laptop Python module: “install apache” Run module Delete module on server 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Inventory and groups Define hosts, organized in groups ● by function ● by location ● by hosting provider ● ... 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Inventory and groups Define hosts, organized in groups [europe] server1.somehoster.co.uk server2.otherhoster.de [north­america] host­a.serverhost.com host­b.serverhost.com [frontend] server1.somehoster.co.uk host­b.serverhost.com [backend] server2.otherhoster.de host­a.serverhost.com 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Adhoc commands Single commands, applied to groups $ ansible ­i hosts europe ­a “uname ­a” $ ansible ­i hosts frontend ­a “/sbin/reboot” ­f 3 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Playbooks ­­­ ­ hosts: frontend sudo: yes tasks: ­ name: Update the system apt: pkg=nginx state=latest ­ name: Create the user account user: name=appuser shell=/bin/bash state=present ­ name: Copy files to remote user's home copy: > src=files/names.txt dst=/home/appuser owner=appuser mode=0644 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Variables ­­­ ­ hosts: all sudo: yes vars: username: appuser tasks: ­ name: Create the user account user: > name={{ username }} shell=/bin/bash state=present 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Project layout 1 / my_hosts group_vars/ all frontend backend europe north­america site.yml 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Project layout 2 / ansible.cfg deploy_hosts staging_hosts group_vars/ all frontend backend europe north­america host_vars/ server1.somehoster.co.uk host­b.serverhost.com site.yml roles/ common/ tasks/ main.yml handlers/ main.yml templates/ sshd_config.j2 files/ my_script.sh vars/ main.yml web/ ... db/ ... 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Playbooks with roles ­­­ ­ hosts: frontend sudo: yes roles: ­ common ­ web 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Local environments 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Dev, Test, Deploy Common issues 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Dev, Test, Deploy Why didn't we catch this bug in testing? How do I setup my development environment? We can't reproduce the issues. I don't have access to our test server. “It works for me...” (shrug) 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Dev, Test, Deploy Why didn't we catch this bug in testing? How do I setup my development environment? We can't reproduce the issues. I don't have access to our test server. “It works for me...” (shrug) Wouldn't this be nice instead? Single command: Dev environment created Single command: Test environment created 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Vagrant ● Use Vagrant to spin-up VMs ● local (VirtualBox, VMware, etc.) ● cloud (EC2) ● Use Ansible as 'provisioner' ● Make an inventory file with just your VM ● Point at same playbook as before 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Ansible and “the cloud” 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult The rise and rise of APIs APIs Local Infrastructure Services This is really cool! 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Ansible 'cloud' modules Public cloud ● Amazon AWS ● Google Compute ● Azure ● Digital Ocean ● Rackspace ● Linode Public cloud ● Amazon AWS ● Google Compute ● Azure ● Digital Ocean ● Rackspace ● Linode Private cloud ● OpenStack ● Eucalyptus ● Vsphere ● Docker ● libvirt Private cloud ● OpenStack ● Eucalyptus ● Vsphere ● Docker ● libvirt 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Example: AWS modules EC2 / infrastructure ● Instances ● Images ● VPCs ● Load balancers Services ● S3 ● Route 53 ● Databases ● Cache 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Example: Create instances # My hostfile: Empty groups [frontend] [backend] [my­server­group] 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Example: Create instances ­ local_action: module: ec2 key_name: my­key group: my­security­group instance_type: t2.micro image: ami­120abc90 region: us­east­1 count: 3 register: ec2results 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Example: Create instances ­ local_action: module: ec2 key_name: my­key group: my­security­group instance_type: t2.micro image: ami­120abc90 region: us­east­1 count: 3 register: ec2results { "ec2results": { "changed": true, "instance_ids": [ "i­da9fbbe4", ... ], "instances": [ { "id": "i­da9fbbe4", "instance_type": "t1.micro", "image_id": "ami­0729b73d", "region": "us­east­1", "public_ip": "54.253.65.41", "private_ip": "10.248.39.121", ... }, ... 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Example: Create instances ­ local_action: module: ec2 key_name: my­key group: my­security­group instance_type: t2.micro image: ami­120abc90 region: us­east­1 count: 3 register: ec2results ­ local_action: module: add_host hostname: {{ item.public_ip }} groupname: my­server­group with_items: ec2results.instances 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Contributing to Ansible 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Contributing ● The perfect FOSS project? ● Lots of small, independent modules ● Written in Python For yourself: Any language, even bash. For contributions: Python preferred 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Getting started $ git clone [email protected]:ansible/ansible.git $ source ansible/hacking/env­setup … edit your module … $ ansible/hacking/test­module ­m ./my_module 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Sample module #!/usr/bin/python import datetime import json date = str(datetime.datetime.now()) print json.dumps({ “changed” : True, "time" : date }) Catch exceptions All output to stdout JSON 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Sample module #!/usr/bin/python DOCUMENTATION = ''' ­­­ module: filewrite short_description: write data to a file description: ­ Write data to start of file. Create if necessary. options: path: description: ­ The full path of the file/object to write to required: true default: null data: description: ­ The data to be written required: false default: some test data ''' 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Sample module import os from ansible.module_utils.basic import * def main(): module = AnsibleModule( argument_spec = dict( path = dict(required=True), data = dict(default='some test', type='str'), ), ) path = module.params.get('path') data = module.params.get('data') try: if os.path.isfile(path): with open(path, "r") as f: d = f.read(len(data)) if d == data: module.exit_json(changed=False, other_data="Not changed.") with open(path, "w") as f: f.write(data) module.exit_json(changed=True, other_data="Wrote %s characters." % len(data)) except Exception as e: module.fail_json(msg=str(e)) main() 

Automated Deployment with Ansible [email protected] @BrendelConsult Thank you very much! Questions: [email protected] Ansible docs: http://docs.ansible.com/ Ansible source: https://github.com/ansible/ansible Vagrant: http://www.vagrantup.com/ Example project: https://github.com/jbrendel/ansible_cluster_setup