Provisioning your Environment with Vagrant and Ansible

Provisioning your environment

Leveraging Vagrant, Ansible, and AWS


Rich Gwozdz, Spatial Development International

Provisioning includes: • Installing software (Apache, PGRestAPI, Postgres) • Adding data (restore databases) • Configuration (configure Apache) • Anything needed to run your server application

Often executed via SSH session and bash scripting:

# Install Postgres$ apt-get postgresql-9.4-postgis-2.1……# Trust Connections$ sudo nano /etc/postgres/9.4/main/pg_hba.conf



You can provision with bash alone; requires careful scripting • variables • conditionals • http requests • file transfers

Enter Provisioning Frameworks: • ease provisioning script development • provided tested, maintained modules • provide a sharing infrastructure



Ansible: simple & straightforward • simple and straightforward • YAML • SSH



Ansible playbook



hosts: A group of target servers listed in:

/etc/ansible/hosts

[ec2s] 123.4.5.6

Ansible playbook



var_files: files containing variables/settings to be used

in all task

Ansible playbook



role: a role is a set of tasks that address a discrete

unit of work. Easily shared across playbooks

Ansible playbook



handler: helper functions

Ansible playbook



tasks: individual plays not grouped into roles

Ansible playbook



{{ my_var }} : example of variable usage

Ansible playbook



# Run playbook$ ansible-playbook -u ubuntu playbook.yml



Ansible Mangement Node • Separate server: configured for SSH with target hosts • Local machine: but requires config changes - could get out of sync • Vagrant VM: distribute it via Git!



Vagrant VM as Ansible Mangement Node

Vagrant provides “lightweight, reproducible, and portable development

environments” (i.e., server VMs) with VirtualBox and some other goodies




Why? • Vagrant VMs are distributable by Git repos • Everyone’s Management node would be identical • Can double as a local deployment of your environment

Cloned Git repo



Vagrant VM as Ansible Mangement Node AND Target host

Local dev environment = deployment environment

Cloned Git repo



Additional Ansible goodies Great AWS support• Create, delete EC2 • Create, delete Security Groups • Set Elastic IPs • Set EC2s as provisioning target hosts via tags rather than hard-coded

IPs

Ansible Galaxy• Hub for find, reusing, sharing Ansible roles (kind of like npm)



Questions?

Provisioning your Environment with Vagrant and Ansible

Software

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