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In the digital world, a key concern for most organizations is how to control multiple servers and streamline the process to make it easy for their administrators. Luckily, there are different configuration management systems, such as Ansible, that make it easy and convenient to automate these tasks. With an automation tool such as Ansible, you can perform tasks such as software deployment and configuration management from one Ansible control host without having to log in to each target server. Ansible is a free automation tool, and if you are new to it, stick around as this post shares everything you need to install it on Ubuntu 24.04. Installation and Configuration of Ansible on Ubuntu 24.04 To work with Ansible, you need an Ansible control host, which is our Ubuntu 24.04, and one or more Ansible hosts. The Ansible hosts are the target machines that you want to automate from one control host. For these hosts, we will use SSH to connect to them through SSH key pairs. Let’s break down the process into understandable steps. Step 1: Install Ansible on Your Control Host On our Ubuntu 24.04(Noble Numbat), that’s where we will install Ansible. First, let’s quickly update and upgrade our system. $ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade Before we can install Ansible using the APT, let’s check the available version in its repository using the command below. $ sudo apt-cache policy ansible We can now run our install command to fetch and install Ansible from our Ubuntu repository. $ sudo apt install ansible Once Ansible installs, check the version to confirm that your installation was successful. $ ansible --version You now have Ansible installed on your system. However, we must configure it to set our control host. Step 2: Setting Up SSH Keys Ansible uses SSH to connect to the Ansible hosts when running any tasks from the Ansible control host. As such, we must copy our Ansible control host’s SSH public key to our Ansible hosts for seamless connection without requiring any passwords. The first step is to generate the SSH key pair on our Ansible control node. $ ssh-keygen You can select a different location to save the key or go with the default location. Moreover, you can set a passphrase for authentication or not. Once you’ve set your preferences, your SSH key pair will be generated. We then must copy the public key to our Ansible hosts. First, ensure you have the IP address of the target host and the username. Once you do so, we will copy the public key using ssh-copy-id with the following command. $ ssh-copy-id username@ip_address You will get a message asking you whether you wish to proceed and authenticate the connection. Type ‘yes’ to continue. Once you enter the password for your remote host, you will get an output showing that the key has been added successfully. While still connected to the remote machine, open the SSH configuration file and disable password authentication, as in the image below. $ sudo nano /etc/ssh/ssh_config Save the file and log out of your remote host. The next time you try to log in, you won’t be prompted to enter your password, as the SSH key pairs will be used for authentication. Step 3: Configuring Your Ansible Control Node So far, we’ve installed Ansible and set up SSH keys for the connection. The other step is to configure our Ansible control node by specifying the IP addresses of all the Ansible hosts that we want to control. To do so, we must create an inventory file containing the host details. Create your inventory file and name it according to your preference. We’ve stored our “ansible-hosts” inventory file in our current directory. Inside the file, add the details of the servers you wish to control and ensure that you’ve set up each server’s SSH keys as we did in the previous step. Lastly, save your inventory file and exit the text editor. To verify that our Ansible inventory file exists, use the below command and replace the “ansible-hosts’ with the path to where you’ve saved your inventory file. $ ansible-inventory --list -i ./ansible-hosts -y You will get an output showing the infrastructure of the added Ansible host(s). Step 4: Test the Ansible Connection The last step involves verifying that our connection works and that we can access and control the added Ansible hosts from our Ansible control node. If the connection was well set up, we should be able to run commands from our control node. For instance, let’s try running a ping command and see if the hosts can connect. In the below command, replace ‘linuxhint’ with the username of your target Ansible host and replace the inventory file to match the path where you’ve saved yours. $ ansible all -i ./ansible-hosts -m ping -u linuxhint The above output shows a success message, confirming that we have control of our Ansible hosts. You can verify this further by running ad-hoc commands. For instance, let’s check the disk usage by running the below command. $ ansible all -i ./ansible-hosts -a “df -h” -u linuxhint That’s it! We’ve managed to install and configure Ansible on Ubuntu 24.04. Conclusion Installing Ansible on Ubuntu 24.04 is easy when you have a clear guide to follow. This post acts as a clear guide to help you easily and quickly install and configure Ansible on Ubuntu 24.04. We’ve shared all the steps and demonstrated that our Ansible connection works as expected. View the full article

Cloud Computing has transformed the IT industry by simplifying IT infrastructure management. With Cloud Computing, organizations can easily provision and scale resources as needed without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Two of the most commonly used tools for infrastructure management and provisioning are Ansible and Terraform. This article discusses what each of the two tools does, their key features, and how they compare in the IaC world. Understanding AnsibleAnsible is an open-source automation tool developed by Red Hat that simplifies complex IT tasks. Its agentless architecture automates configuration management and application deployment on remote machines using SSH and WinRM protocols. Ansible uses declarative language to define its desired state for any system. Instead of providing step-by-step instructions, users describe an end state they'd like their system to reach, leaving Ansible to determine the most efficient route toward that goal. This approach enhances simplicity and readability in Ansible's configuration files (called playbooks). Key Features of Ansible:Agentless Architecture: Ansible does not deploy agents, i.e., it does not require extra software on the target machines. This makes its setup easier and mitigates problems such as out-of-date agents, which are a common problem with agent-based solutions. YAML-based Playbooks: Ansible playbook scripts are written in YAML, making them easy to read for humans and understandable without much expertise. Playbooks define a set of tasks to be executed on managed nodes to achieve the desired state. Idempotent Execution: The Ansible tasks are idempotent, which means that applying the same configuration multiple times yields identical results as applying it just once. This ensures systems stay in their desired states even if repeated configurations are applied, helping prevent infrastructure configuration drift. Extensible: Ansible is highly extensible, supporting custom modules and plugins explicitly created to integrate seamlessly into existing infrastructure or workflows. This extensibility enables Ansible to meet individual users' requirements with ease. Integration: Ansible integrates easily with popular version control systems such as Git, enabling engineers to combine infrastructure configurations with application code to provide visibility and enable collaboration. To learn more about playbooks, check out this blog: What is Ansible Playbook and How to Write it? Understanding TerraformTerraform is a popular open-source tool developed by HashiCorp that enables users to manage infrastructure as code. It provides support for multiple cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and more. Terraform users write declarative configuration files in HCL to define and provision infrastructure resources like virtual machines, storage accounts, and network configurations. This makes it easier for teams to collaborate and manage infrastructure changes in a safe and consistent manner across different cloud providers. Key Features of Terraform:Infrastructure as Code: Terraform enables infrastructure to be defined using code, which can be versioned, shared, and reused like any other software artifact. This approach brings consistency and repeatability to infrastructure provisioning. Declarative Configuration: Similar to Ansible, Terraform follows a declarative approach. Users specify the desired state of their infrastructure in configuration files, and Terraform determines the actions necessary to reach that state. Provider Ecosystem: Terraform supports a vast ecosystem of providers, including major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud and numerous third-party providers for services like Kubernetes, Docker, and more. This allows users to manage heterogeneous environments using a single tool. Plan and Apply Workflow: Terraform employs a two-step workflow consisting of "plan" and "apply" phases. During the "plan" phase, Terraform generates an execution plan describing its actions to achieve the desired state. In the "apply" phase, Terraform executes the plan, making the necessary changes to the infrastructure. State Management: Terraform maintains a state file that records the current state of the infrastructure. This state file is used to map real-world resources to the configuration, track dependencies, and plan future changes. Proper state management is crucial for ensuring the integrity of infrastructure changes. Ansible vs. Terraform: Key DifferencesNow that we have a basic understanding of Ansible and Terraform, let's compare them across several key dimensions: Use CasesAnsible excels in configuration management by automating the setup and maintenance of servers and infrastructure components at scale. Whether it's configuring software, adjusting system parameters, or managing file systems, Ansible simplifies the complexities associated with maintaining a large and diverse IT environment. Terraform focuses mainly on infrastructure provisioning and management. It is the best choice for defining, controlling, and managing cloud resources, such as infrastructure components and services from different providers. Terraform is usually used for situations where infrastructure is transient and needs to be provisioned dynamically. Language and SyntaxAnsible sets up playbooks in YAML, a format famous for its simplicity and readability. This makes playbooks easy to understand for both beginners and extensively experienced users. In Terraform, users define infrastructure using HCL or JSON. HCL not only handles infrastructure configuration situations but also provides features such as interpolation and resource blocks for defining resources. Execution ModelAnsible uses a push-based model, where the control node is responsible for transmitting commands and configurations via SSH to the targeted nodes. This model is perfect for orchestrating tasks in multiple systems and can even grow to thousands of nodes. Terraform uses a pull-based model, where each target node independently pulls its configuration from a source like a version control repository. This model allows organizations to maintain greater control over their infrastructure and ensures that changes are made consistently and reliably. Resource AbstractionAnsible splits infrastructure operations into individual tasks, which are then run sequentially, one after another, on the target nodes. Though Ansible offers you modules for managing cloud resources, network devices, and so on, it does not outline resource modeling as built-in as Terraform does. The Terraform stack uses a declarative configuration language that allows users to explicitly define dependencies, relationships, and provisioning logic. Adapting this approach helps manage complex IT infrastructure more flexibly and predictably. Ecosystem and IntegrationsAnsible leverages a comprehensive set of modules, roles, and integrations to make the configuration process even easier. It synchronizes perfectly with cloud services such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Terraform integration works by utilizing provider plugins, which are responsible for managing resources and communicating with the provider's API. When you define your infrastructure with Terraform, you specify the resources you want to create, and Terraform uses the provider plugin to create those resources in the corresponding cloud provider. It also supports modules, which are reusable pieces of infrastructure that can be shared across different projects, teams, and organizations. State ManagementAnsible does not keep a distinct state file. Rather, it utilizes the current state of target nodes while playbook execution is running. Although this makes management easier, there might be issues with monitoring and managing infrastructure variations over time. Terraform keeps a state file that shows the current state of the infrastructure. It uses this information to understand which resources have been created, updated, or destroyed during each run. This information allows Terraform to make intelligent decisions regarding which resources should be created, updated, or destroyed during future runs. Check out this blog to learn How to Manage Terraform State with Examples. Learning Curve and AdoptionAnsible's simplicity and agentless architecture make it relatively easy to learn, particularly for users with experience in YAML and basic scripting. The learning curve may steepen when dealing with complex playbooks and orchestration scenarios. Terraform's learning curve can be steeper due to its declarative language and the need to understand infrastructure concepts like state management and provider configurations. However, Terraform's comprehensive documentation and active community support help mitigate these challenges. Community and SupportAnsible benefits from a large and active community of users, contributors, and maintainers. The Ansible Galaxy repository hosts thousands of reusable roles and playbooks contributed by the community, making it easy to find and share automation solutions. Terraform has a vibrant community that actively contributes modules, plugins, and best practices. HashiCorp provides commercial support for Terraform through its enterprise offerings, along with extensive documentation and training resources. Choosing the Right ToolSelecting the right tool for infrastructure automation depends on various factors, including your organization's requirements, existing infrastructure, team expertise, and long-term goals. Here are the considerations to help you make an informed decision: Infrastructure Complexity: If your environment includes diverse infrastructure components, such as servers, networking equipment, and cloud resources, Ansible's versatility and simplicity may be advantageous. Cloud-native Environments: Terraform's IaC approach and provider ecosystem offer better integration and management capabilities for organizations heavily invested in cloud computing and containerization. Team Skills and Preferences: Consider your team's existing skills and familiarity with programming languages, configuration management tools, and cloud platforms. To minimize learning curves, choose a tool that aligns with your team's expertise and preferences. Automation Goals: Define your automation objectives, such as improving deployment speed, enhancing infrastructure reliability, or optimizing resource utilization. Evaluate how each tool addresses your specific requirements and fits into your workflows. Integration Requirements: Assess the need to integrate automation workflows with existing tools, processes, and third-party services. Look for tools that offer robust integration capabilities and support industry standards for seamless interoperability. Scalability and Maintainability: Consider each tool's scalability and maintainability, including support for version control and collaboration features. Choose a tool that can scale with your organization's growth and evolving infrastructure needs. ConclusionBoth Ansible and Terraform are powerful utilities for infrastructure automation. Ansible stands out in configuration management, application deployment, and general-purpose automation. Terraform, on the other hand, is particularly good in infrastructure provisioning using the IaC methodology. By explaining the anatomy of Ansible and Terraform and addressing their strengths and flaws, your skilled team can make the right decision for your success in DevOps and cloud computing. If you are looking to polish your Terraform skills in a real-world environment? Enroll in our Terraform Basics Training Course, which covers all of Terraform fundamentals. If you want to master Ansible, check out these KodeKloud courses: Learn Ansible Basics – Beginners CourseAnsible Advanced CourseView the full article

To remain competitive today, organizations have to adopt software development methodologies that enable shorter time to market and reliability for their products. This requires the integration of automation into software development and infrastructure provisioning as well as management. One popular infrastructure management automation tool is Ansible. In this blog, we will discuss what Ansible is and then delve into the depths of Ansible to understand its significance, features, and role in the DevOps landscape. What is Ansible?Ansible is an open-source automation tool developed by Red Hat that simplifies complex IT tasks. Utilizing its agentless architecture, Ansible automates configuration management and application deployment on remote machines using SSH and WinRM protocols. Key Features of AnsibleBelow are some of Ansible’s key features: Agentless Architecture:One of Ansible’s most notable features is its agentless architecture. While other configuration management tools require agents to be installed on managed nodes, Ansible uses SSH and WinRM instead for remote execution of tasks. This makes its setup easier and mitigates problems such as out-of-date agents, which are a common problem with agent-based solutions. Declarative Language:Ansible uses declarative language to define its desired state for any system. Instead of providing step-by-step instructions, users describe an end state they'd like their system to reach, leaving Ansible to determine the most efficient route toward that goal. This approach enhances simplicity and readability in Ansible's configuration files (called playbooks). Idempotence:Ansible adheres to the principle of idempotence, meaning that applying the same configuration multiple times yields identical results as applying it just once. This ensures systems stay in their desired states even if repeated configurations are applied, helping prevent infrastructure configuration drift. Extensibility:Ansible is highly extensible, supporting custom modules and plugins explicitly created to integrate seamlessly into existing infrastructure or workflows. This extensibility enables Ansible to meet individual users' requirements with ease. Broad Platform Support:Ansible is designed to work on many different platforms, including Linux, Unix, and Windows. This versatility makes Ansible an invaluable asset in heterogeneous environments, enabling organizations to manage and automate infrastructure configurations more efficiently. Ansible’s Components:Ansible's architecture consists of several components that work together to automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and application deployments. Let's explore each of the components in detail: 1. Control Node:The control node is where Ansible is installed, and automation tasks are initiated. It can be any machine, including a developer's laptop or a dedicated server. The control node holds the Ansible command-line interface (CLI), playbooks, inventory files, and configuration files. It is responsible for orchestrating and managing the automation process. 2. Inventory:The inventory file is a configuration file containing a list of managed nodes organized into groups and their connection details. The inventory file allows for easy categorization and grouping of hosts based on different criteria such as function, location, or environment. 3. Modules:Ansible modules are small units of code that perform specific tasks on managed nodes. Modules are executed on the managed nodes to perform actions such as installing packages, managing files, or configuring services. Ansible includes a broad set of built-in modules, and it also allows users to create custom modules to address specific automation needs. 4. Playbooks:Playbooks are written in YAML and define a set of tasks to be executed on managed nodes. They describe the desired state of the system and the steps required to achieve that state. Playbooks can include variables, conditionals, loops, and more. They serve as the central configuration, orchestration, and automation files in Ansible. To learn more about playbooks, read this blog: What is Ansible Playbook and How to Write it? 5. Tasks:Tasks are individual units within a playbook that define the actions performed on managed nodes. Each task typically corresponds to the execution of a module. They are executed sequentially, following the order defined in the playbook, and can include various parameters and conditions. 6. Handler:Handlers are special tasks that are only executed if a task notifies them. They are typically used for tasks that need to be triggered as a result of changes, such as restarting a service after a configuration update. Handlers add another level of control and efficiency to the execution flow. 7. Roles:Roles provide a way to organize and structure playbooks. A role is a collection of related tasks, variables, and handlers grouped together. Roles enhance reusability and maintainability, allowing automation logic to be shared and applied across different projects. 8. Plugins:Ansible supports a plugin system that allows users to extend and customize its functionality. Plugins can be used for various purposes, such as creating custom inventory scripts, adding new connection types, or developing custom callbacks for reporting. How Ansible Works? Ansible works by connecting to managed nodes (servers or devices) using SSH or WinRM, and then pushing out small programs called "Ansible modules" to the nodes. Here is a more detailed guide on how Ansible works: Step 1: Define the nodes to be configured in an inventory file. Step 2: Define the tasks you want to execute in a Playbook Step 3: Initiate the execution of the playbook on the managed nodes defined in the inventory file. Step 4: The Ansible control node connects to the managed nodes (servers or devices) using SSH or WinRM, and invokes modules to perform specific actions on managed nodes, such as software installation or configuration adjustments. Step 5: After execution, Ansible provides detailed reports that help in troubleshooting and auditing. This process allows for safe and repeatable automation of infrastructure and application management tasks. Additionally, Ansible's agentless architecture eliminates the need for agents on managed nodes; you only install Ansible in the control node. Ansible Use CasesBelow are some of the key Ansible use cases: 1. Configuration Management:Ansible excels in configuration management by automating the setup and maintenance of servers and infrastructure components at scale. Whether it's configuring software, adjusting system parameters, or managing file systems, Ansible simplifies the complexities associated with maintaining a large and diverse IT environment. 2. Application Deployment:Automating the deployment of applications is crucial for achieving a rapid and reliable release cycle. Ansible streamlines the installation, configuration, and scaling of applications, reducing manual errors and accelerating the time-to-market for software releases. Its idempotent nature ensures consistent application deployments across various environments. 3. Infrastructure as Code (IaC):Ansible facilitates Infrastructure as Code practices by allowing infrastructure configurations to be defined, versioned, and managed alongside application code. This approach enables seamless collaboration, increased consistency, and code reusability. Learn more about IaC from our Blog: What is Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)? 4. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD):Integrating Ansible into CI/CD pipelines automates various stages of the software development lifecycle. Playbooks can be utilized to provision testing environments, execute automated tests, and deploy applications. This ensures a consistent and streamlined process from code commit to production deployment. 5. Security Automation:Ansible aids in automating security-related tasks such as vulnerability assessments, patch management, and compliance checks. Security playbooks can be created to enforce security policies, deploy security patches, and respond to security incidents promptly. This proactive approach helps organizations maintain a secure and compliant infrastructure. 6. Orchestration of Multi-Tier Applications:Ansible orchestrates the deployment and configuration of multi-tier applications, ensuring that inter-connected components are correctly provisioned and configured. For example, a playbook can define the tasks to update the package cache, install Apache on web servers, and install MySQL on the database server. It can have handlers to perform additional actions like restarting services, notifying administrators, or cleaning up temporary resources. 7. Cloud Provisioning and Management:Ansible extends its reach to cloud environments, allowing users to automate the provisioning and management of resources in platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Ansible connects to cloud service providers using modules specifically designed for each provider. For example, it uses ec2_instance module to create EC2 instances in AWS. 8. Network Automation:Ansible's automation capabilities are not limited to servers and applications, it extends to network devices. Network engineers can use Ansible to automate configuration changes, perform backups, and ensure consistency across networking devices. This reduces manual errors, speeds up network provisioning, and enhances overall network management. 9. Log Management and Analysis:Ansible can be employed to automate log management tasks, including installing and configuring log collection systems. Playbooks can define how logs are forwarded, stored, and analyzed. This ensures that organizations have a centralized and automated approach to monitoring and analyzing logs for troubleshooting and security purposes. Best Practices for Ansible in DevOpsBelow are some best practices you should adhere to when working with Ansible: Version Control for Playbooks:Store Ansible playbooks in version control systems like Git to track changes, collaborate with team members, and roll back to previous configurations if needed. Use Roles for Reusability:Leverage Ansible roles to encapsulate and reuse automation logic across projects. This promotes consistency and reduces the effort required to manage complex playbooks. Secure Communication:Ensure secure communication between the Ansible control node and managed nodes. Implement best practices for SSH key management and encryption to safeguard sensitive information. Documentation:Document playbooks, roles, and inventory files comprehensively. Well-documented automation is crucial for knowledge sharing, troubleshooting, and the onboarding of new team members. Testing and Validation:Implement automated testing for Ansible playbooks to catch errors early in the development process. Validation steps should be included to confirm that the desired state has been achieved. ConclusionAnsible's intuitive design and powerful capabilities have cemented its place as a top DevOps tool. Its agentless architecture, declarative language, and extensive modularity enable organizations to leverage it across various automation scenarios. As organizations increasingly embrace DevOps practices, Ansible remains an indispensable solution, allowing them to streamline operations, enhance collaboration, and meet modern IT environments' evolving demands more easily. Make Ansible your ally and start on your path toward automated excellence! Enroll in KodeKloud’s Ansible Course to get started. View the full article

IBM extended the reach of the generative AI tools it provides to automate the writing of code to the Ansible IT automation framework. View the full article

Today we are announcing the availability of Ansible and Corretto 21 on Amazon Linux 2023 as a part of second quarterly update. View the full article

30 Best DevOps Tools to Learn and Master In 2023: Git, Docker ... https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/devops-tutorial/devops-tools

This article aims to ease novices into Ansible IAC at the hand of an example. The example being booting one's own out-of-cloud Kubernetes cluster. As such, the intricacies of the steps required to boot a local k8s cluster are beyond the scope of this article. The steps can, however, be studied at the GitHub repo, where the Ansible scripts are checked in. The scripts were tested on Ubuntu20, running virtually on Windows Hyper-V. Network connectivity was established via an external virtual network switch on an ethernet adaptor shared between virtual machines but not with Windows. Dynamic memory was switched off from the Hyper-V UI. An SSH service daemon was pre-installed to allow Ansible a tty terminal to run commands from. View the full article

In this article, I will demonstrate how to monitor Ansible Automation Platform(AAP) running on OpenShift, using user-workload-monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana... View the full article

Ansible is an open-source software provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment tool. It uses declarative language to describe the system’s desired state and leverages SSH to communicate and enforce that state on the target machines. Environment variables are some of the most useful tools in dynamic environments. But what exactly are environment variables? Environment variables are key-value pairs that can influence the behavior of the tools that run in a system. They act as global settings which allows the different processes to communicate and configure their behavior without modifying the code. This tutorial teaches us how to work with environment variables in Ansible using various methods and techniques... View the full article

Homepage WHY ANSIBLE? Working in IT, you're likely doing the same tasks over and over. What if you could solve problems once and then automate your solutions going forward? Ansible is here to help. COMPLEXITY KILLS PRODUCTIVITY Every business is a digital business. Technology is your innovation engine, and delivering your applications faster helps you win. Historically, that required a lot of manual effort and complicated coordination. But today, there is Ansible - the simple, yet powerful IT automation engine that thousands of companies are using to drive complexity out of their environments and accelerate DevOps initiatives. ANSIBLE LOVES THE REPETITIVE WORK YOUR PEOPLE HATE No one likes repetitive tasks. With Ansible, IT admins can begin automating away the drudgery from their daily tasks. Automation frees admins up to focus on efforts that help deliver more value to the business by speeding time to application delivery, and building on a culture of success. Ultimately, Ansible gives teams the one thing they can never get enough of: time. Allowing smart people to focus on smart things. Ansible is a simple automation language that can perfectly describe an IT application infrastructure. It’s easy-to-learn, self-documenting, and doesn’t require a grad-level computer science degree to read. Automation shouldn’t be more complex than the tasks it’s replacing.

Testing ChatGPT Ansible playbooks, building RHEL homelabs, and more tips for sysadmins Image Check out Enable Sysadmin’s top 10 articles from February 2023. Posted: March 3, 2023 | %t min read| by Vicki Walker (Editorial Team, Red Hat) Topics: Ansible Containers Read the full article on redhat.com Read More at Enable Sysadmin The post Testing ChatGPT Ansible playbooks, building RHEL homelabs, and more tips for sysadmins appeared first on Linux.com. View the full article

Examine your data in a user-friendly dashboard that shows multiple views of the same data. Read More at Enable Sysadmin The post Build a Grafana dashboard to visualize data using Ansible and Podman appeared first on Linux.com. View the full article

ChatGPT can write code, but is it good code? Read More at Enable Sysadmin The post Can ChatGPT write Ansible playbooks that work? appeared first on Linux.com. View the full article

Although YAML is considered easy to understand, its syntax can be quite confusing. Use this guide to the basics. Read More at Enable Sysadmin The post How to use YAML nesting, lists, and comments in Ansible playbooks appeared first on Linux.com. View the full article

You can use the numeric codes returned by shell scripts or Ansible playbooks to identify problems and test the code. View the full article

At Red Hat Consulting we help customers to adopt Red Hat products and technologies and make the most out of them. We believe addressing customer business needs is the best way to increase customer's ROI. View the full article

I have been involved with the Ansible project since its earliest days as a contributor, then later as a customer and consultant, and now as product manager. So I have been around Ansible automation for a quite awhile and have seen it from many perspectives. In my role as an Ansible product manager and evangelist, I have been fortunate enough to meet many IT professionals around the globe and discuss how automation and DevOps culture can be applied to their organizations. Sometimes I am asked what they should automate. Other times, I am challenged that an automation tool like Ansible is unnecessary or does not apply to what they are doing... View the full article

Last November, Red Hat released Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, a new offering that combines Ansible solutions with new capabilities. As part of this, Ansible customers could now take advantage of new hosted services, such as Automation Analytics and Automation Hub, while also unifying Ansible Tower and Ansible Engine under one overarching platform... View the full article There are a number of new Collections scheduled to be announced at AnsibleFest in October ...

Earlier this week, Red Hat announced the integration of its Ansible automation solution with its OpenShift Kubernetes container platform. The integration is designed to accelerate the automation and integration between traditional and cloud-based infrastructure. The idea behind this move is to allow customers to upgrade to cloud-based services while preserving existing infrastructure. View the full article

What cloud providers do you work with? Google Cloud Platform (GCP)? Amazon AWS? Microsoft Azure? Which services? Are you using a managed Kubernetes such as GKE, AKS, Openshift or EKS? How do you manage your cloud resources? How do you manage the release cycle of the infrastructure and applications that you deploy? If the above […] The post Cloud Orchestration Language Roundup: A Comparison appeared first on DevOps.com. View the full article

Red Hat, its online AnsibleFest 2020 conference today, announced an on-premises edition of Ansible Automation Platform dubbed Private Automation Hub and previewed technology to connect the Ansible Automation Platform managed as a cloud service by Red Hat and the on-premises edition. In addition, Red Hat is making available more pre-integrated workflows to its certified Ansible […] The post Red Hat Expands Scope, Reach of Ansible Automation Framework appeared first on DevOps.com. View the full article

A brief introduction to Ansible roles for Linux system administration In this part one of two articles, learn to use rhel-system-roles with your Ansible deployment to better manage functionality such as network, firewall, SELinux, and more on your Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. Shiwani Biradar Mon, 1/18/2021 at 2:07pm Image Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels Ansible is an open source automation platform that includes configuration management, application deployment, and infrastructure orchestration. It is a popular automation tool for DevOps engineers and for system administrators. System administrators often face career burnout due to long hours and from performing repetitive tasks on many systems, but Ansible helps make these tasks easier to complete. Tasks such as user creation, service management, and software installs can be accomplished using Ansible. Topics: Linux Linux Administration Ansible Read More at Enable Sysadmin The post A brief introduction to Ansible roles for Linux system administration appeared first on Linux.com. View the full article

When you are using Ansible with AWS, maintaining the inventory file will be a hectic task as AWS has frequently changed IPs, autoscaling instances, and much more. However, there is an easy solution called ansible dynamic inventory. Dynamic inventory is an ansible plugin that makes an API call to AWS to get the instance information in the run time. It gives you the ec2 instance details dynamically to manage the AWS infrastructure. When I started using the Dynamic inventory, it was just a Python file. Later it became an Ansible plugin. I will talk more about how to manage the AWS dynamic inventory later in this article. Dynamic inventory is not limited to just AWS. It supports most of the public and private cloud platforms. Here is the article on managing GCP resources using Ansible Dynamic inventory. Setup Ansible AWS Dynamic Inventory In this tutorial, you will learn how to set up a dynamic inventory on AWS using boto and the AWS ec2 Ansible plugin. Follow the steps carefully for the setup. Step 1: Install python3 sudo yum install python3 -y Step 2: Install the boto3 library. sudo pip3 install boto Step 3: Create a inventory directory under /opt and cd in to the directory. sudo mkdir -p /opt/ansible/inventory cd /opt/ansible/inventory Step 4: Create a file named aws_ec2.yaml in the inventory directory and copy the following configuration. Note: The file name should be aws_ec2.yaml. Also, replace add your AWS access key and secret to the config file. --- plugin: aws_ec2 aws_access_key: <YOUR-AWS-ACCESS-KEY-HERE> aws_secret_key: <YOUR-AWS-SECRET-KEY-HERE> keyed_groups: - key: tags prefix: tag If you have an AWS instance role attached to the instance with required Ansible permissions, you don’t have to add the access and secret key in the configuration. Ansible will automatically use the attached role to make the AWS API calls. Step 5: Open /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg and find the [inventory] section and add the following line to enable the ec2 plugin. enable_plugins = aws_ec2 It should look something like this. [inventory] enable_plugins = aws_ec2 Step 6: Now lets test the dynamic inventory configuration by listing the ec2 instances. ansible-inventory -i /opt/ansible/inventory/aws_ec2.yaml --list The above command returns the list of ec2 instances with all its parameters in JSON format. If you want to use the dynamic inventory as a default Ansible inventory, edit the ansible.cfg file present in /etc/ansible directory and search for inventory parameter under defaults. Change the inventory parameter value as shown below. inventory = /opt/ansible/inventory/aws_ec2.yaml Now if you run the inventory list command without passing the inventory file, Ansible looks for the default location and picks up the aws_ec2.yaml inventory file. Step 6: Execute the following command to test if Ansible is able to ping all the machines returned by the dynamic inventory. ansible all -m ping Grouping EC2 Resources The primary use case of AWS Ansible dynamic inventory is to execute Ansible playbooks or ad-hoc commands against a single or group of categorized or grouped instances based on tags, regions, or other ec2 parameters. You can group instances using tags, instances type, instance names, custom filters and more. Take a look at all supported filters and keyed groups from here. Here is a minimal configuration for aws_ec2.yaml that uses few keyed_groups and filters. --- plugin: aws_ec2 aws_access_key: <YOUR-AWS-ACCESS-KEY-HERE> aws_secret_key: <YOUR-AWS-SECRET-KEY-HERE> regions: - us-west-2 keyed_groups: - key: tags prefix: tag - prefix: instance_type key: instance_type - key: placement.region prefix: aws_region Execute the following command to list the dynamic inventory groups. ansible-inventory --graph You will see an output like the following with all instances grouped under tags, zones, and region with dynamic group names like aws_region_us_west_2 , instance_type_t2_micro, tag_Name_Ansible Now you can execute Ansible ad-hoc commands or playbook against these groups. Execute Anisble Commands With Dynamic Inventory Lets test the dynamic inventory by executing few ansible ad-hoc commands. Note: Make sure you have the SSH keys or user/password setup in your ansible configuration for Ansible to connect to it for executing the commands. Execute Ping I am going to execute the ping command with all instances in the region us_west_2. As per my configuration, the dynamic group name is aws_region_us_west_2. ansible aws_region_us_west_2 -m ping If you have all the right configurations, you should see an output like the following. ec2-54-218-105-53.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com | SUCCESS => { "ansible_facts": { "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3" }, "changed": false, "ping": "pong" } Using Dynamic Inventory Inside Playbook If you want to use dynamic inventory inside the playbook, you just need to mention the group name in the hosts varaible as shown below. --- - name: Ansible Test Playbook gather_facts: false hosts: aws_region_us_west_2 tasks: - name: Run Shell Command command: echo "Hello World" View the full article