Configuration Management Tool Ansible

Ansible is a powerful configuration management tool that enables organizations to automate the provisioning, configuration, and management of IT infrastructure in a simple, efficient, and consistent manner. It uses a declarative language and follows the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) paradigm, allowing administrators to define infrastructure configurations in human-readable YAML files.

Key features and benefits of Ansible as a configuration management tool include:

Agentless Architecture: Ansible operates in an agentless manner, which means it doesn't require any software to be installed on managed nodes. This simplifies deployment and reduces overhead, making it easy to manage a large number of systems.

Simple and Human-Readable Syntax: Ansible playbooks, written in YAML, are easy to read, write, and understand. This enables infrastructure configurations to be managed efficiently by both system administrators and developers.

Idempotent Execution: Ansible ensures idempotent execution, meaning that running the same playbook multiple times will result in the same desired state, regardless of the initial state of the system. This ensures consistency and predictability in configuration management tasks.

Module-Based Architecture: Ansible provides a wide range of modules that abstract common system administration tasks, such as package management, file manipulation, user management, and service control. These modules can be used to configure various aspects of the infrastructure without the need for custom scripting.

Role-Based Organization: Ansible allows administrators to organize playbooks and tasks into reusable units called roles. Roles promote modularity, code reuse, and maintainability, making it easier to manage complex infrastructure configurations.

Integration and Extensibility: Ansible integrates seamlessly with existing tools, systems, and processes, allowing for easy integration into CI/CD pipelines, monitoring systems, and other automation workflows. Additionally, Ansible's modular architecture makes it extensible, allowing users to develop custom modules and plugins to extend its functionality.

Community and Ecosystem: Ansible benefits from a large and active community of users, contributors, and developers. This vibrant ecosystem provides access to a wealth of pre-built roles, modules, and playbooks through Ansible Galaxy, accelerating development and reducing time to value.

Way of using Ansible.

We can use ansible in 2 ways 1- Control Node/Managed Node 2. Ansible Tower/AWX(UI Based helpful to manage large level organization centrally )

In this blog I will be discussing about 1st way of using ansible where we use to have one control node and from control node we use to push the code to all managed nodes. This way of working with ansible was good for a small organization, but there was a drawback that there was not any history of successful and failed job and admin need to run the playbook login from the control node or using CICD tool.

Now we have a tool called Ansible Semaphore using that we can run our playbook from the UI and can keep track of successful and failed jobs.

Configure Ansible Semaphore on your control node.

Installing Semaphore using Snap

root@master:~# apt install snap

root@master:~# snap install semaphore

root@master:~# snap stop semaphore

Add a admin user to to Login to Semaphore UI

root@master:~# sudo semaphore user add --admin --login amit --name=Amit Chaturvedi --email=test@gmail.com --password=1234

root@master:~# snap start semaphore

Lets Login to Semaphore UI

Use the same username and password we created in the above command

We will land to a page where it will ask to create a new project.

Click on new Project and create a new project

I am keeping my playbooks into github repo

Lets run the playbook from UI

Step-1 Create KeyStore to store credential to clone git repo.

Click on key store

Click on New Key

In Username/Password give PAT created in your Github account

Select the type and create

Step-2 Create Environment

In extra variable I am not passing any variable so keeping it empty

Create The Environment

Step-3 Create Environment

Click on Create Inventory

We have to pass the inventory list like list of managed node

We have 3 types 1) via file 2) static 3) Static yml. I am using file type

Click on create Inventory

Step4: Create Repository where you have kept the code so Semaphore will clone the repo locally

Provide the details and save it

Step-5: Lets create Task Template

Click on Create New Template

Provide the details of your repo, credentials and others

Lets Run the Template and see the magic

Click on Run

If every thing configure properly. Your playbook will run successfully.

Now Click on Dashboard to See the Status

Hope Now you will find how easy to manage ansible using Semaphore