Ansible is a tool used for IT automation with following areas of focus.

In this workshop we would like to introduce you to at least two aspects mentioned in the list above, through assignments.

Assignment goals

We want to introduce you to Software provisioning and Application deployment via a simple example of flask web appplication deployment. We have created four assingments for you to go through and get experience in the ansible works.

Software provisioning

For us to deploy a flask web app on to a machine, the machine needs to have flask installed on it. To install flask we need pip installer.

We have dedicated two assignments on how to provision these pre-requisits.

Application deployment

In the next two assingments we want to learn, how to actually deploy the flask web app and start running the app.

Architecture

To create this workshop, we have used two docker containers .

Docker compose is used to configure these two containers and build them.

Architectural Diagram

Folder structure

Files are organized in the following structure in the workshop

Folder structure

configuration

In this folder we have all the assignment files.

The main playbook is at the top level and is named as playbook.yml. A folder is created for each of the assignment with a subfolder named as tasks. In the tasks folder one can find main.yml file associated with respective task.

For e.g.

For Assignment 1 you need to modify main.yml file in folder installpip3/tasks/

These paths are also mentioned in the playbook.yml file.

dockerfiles

In this folder we have docker files which would be used by docker compose to build our docker container.

documentation

We try to keep all our documentation related to the workshop in this folder. Including the presentations.

solutions

We have placed solution to the assignment in this folder

webapp

This folder contains the flask app that will be used to deploy on the docker host

other files

Rest of the top level files are used for configuring this page (_config.yml), ansible configuration (ansible.cfg), docker compose config(docker-compose.yml) and list all the hosts (hosts)

Getting started

Start Docker

To start with make sure docker service is running!

Clone repository

Only once, you clone the repository using the command:

git clone https://github.com/sebivenlo/ESDE-2022-Ansible-workshop.git
Change directory into the folder in which you cloned the repository!

Start docker service containers

Only once, you start the docker services using the command:

docker-compose up --build -d

Be aware that this process can take a while!

Access ansible environment

Only once, you access the ansible docker container by using the command:

docker-compose run ansible

Change directory

Only once, you change directory by using the command:

cd ansible/configuration

Execute ansible-playbook command

Every single time you are ready to test your assigment you run the command:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml --extra-vars "ansible_sudo_pass=workshop"

Solve assignments

Whenever you are working on an assignment in a file named “main.yml”, start by main file called “playbook.yml”. From there you will be directed to the assignments. Every assignment has a goal, task and a link to the documentation. Solutions are easy to find in the documentation.

How we would advice you to work is to first start off with looking at the playbook.yml file in your favorite text editor (Visual Studio Code or for instance Notepad ++). Afterwards, you can choose the assignment to start with by going to the mentioned file. Once you made the assignments you can test it by running the command in the next section

Validate output

Each assignment file mentions how the results can be validated