👋Introduction

Greetings, and welcome to Day 55 of our expedition into the realm of DevOps and automation! 🎊

In today's adventure, we will delve deeply into Ansible, an open-source automation utility that holds a pivotal role in handling configuration management, deploying applications, orchestrating intra-service operations, and facilitating provisioning.

Moreover, we will embark on practical exercises to initiate your journey with Ansible.

🌟What is Ansible?

Ansible stands as a robust and widely embraced open-source automation tool, streamlining IT tasks by providing a foundation for managing configurations, deploying applications, orchestrating intra-service activities, and enabling provisioning.

Developed under the aegis of Red Hat, Ansible boasts an intuitive, adaptable, and efficient design.

It employs declarative language, allowing you to articulate the desired state of your system while Ansible takes on the responsibility of bringing that state to fruition.

Certainly, here is the revised content with any potential plagiarism removed:

✔Key Features of Ansible

1. Agentless

Ansible's most notable feature is its agentless architecture. It operates without requiring agents or additional software on target systems, keeping it lightweight and easily manageable.

2. Declarative Language

Ansible employs YAML-based playbooks, where you articulate your desired system state rather than composing step-by-step procedural code.

3. Idempotent

Ansible guarantees that repeatedly applying the same playbook has the same effect as applying it once. This idempotent characteristic minimizes unintended changes and simplifies rollbacks.

4. Extensible

Ansible is highly extensible, enabling you to create custom modules, plugins, and roles tailored to your specific requirements.

5. Orchestration

You can define intricate workflows and coordinate multiple tasks efficiently, making it suitable for automating complex operations.

6. Parallel Execution

Ansible can execute tasks concurrently on multiple hosts, significantly expediting operations on extensive infrastructures.

7. Strong Community

Ansible boasts a vibrant and active community that contributes to its growth, ensuring a wealth of readily available playbooks, roles, and modules for common tasks.

✔Advantages of Ansible

1. Simplicity

Ansible's straightforward syntax and user-friendly nature make it accessible to both newcomers and experienced DevOps professionals.

2. Agentless Architecture

The absence of agents simplifies setup and maintenance, reducing the overhead associated with managing agents on target systems.

3. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Ansible encourages the use of Infrastructure as Code, facilitating the definition and version control of infrastructure configurations.

4. Cross-Platform Compatibility

Ansible excels at managing diverse systems, including Linux, Windows, and network devices, offering a unified automation platform.

5. Security

Secure communication via SSH and HTTPS ensures the confidentiality and integrity of automation tasks.

✔Common Use Cases for Ansible

1. Configuration Management

Ansible maintains and enforces desired configurations on servers, ensuring consistency throughout your infrastructure.

2. Application Deployment

It automates application deployment and updates, reducing manual intervention and minimizing downtime.

3. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

Ansible plays a pivotal role in CI/CD pipelines by automating testing, building, and deployment processes.

4. Cloud Provisioning

Ansible creates and manages cloud resources on platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, enabling Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in cloud environments.

5. Security Compliance

Ansible enforces security configurations, guaranteeing systems adhere to security policies and standards.

6. Disaster Recovery

Automation of backup and recovery procedures minimizes data loss and downtime during disasters.

`📜Task 1: Installation of Ansible on AWS EC2 (Master Node)`

Before you can start using Ansible, you need to set it up on your system. In this task, we'll walk you through the process of installing Ansible on an AWS EC2 instance that will serve as the master node. Here are the steps:

Add Ansible PPA: To install Ansible on your EC2 instance, you'll first need to add the Ansible PPA (Personal Package Archive) to your system. This ensures that you get the latest stable version of Ansible.
```
 sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible
```
Update Package List: Next, update the package list to include the newly added Ansible PPA.
```
 sudo apt update
```
Install Ansible: Finally, install Ansible using the following command:
```
 sudo apt install ansible
```

With these steps completed, Ansible is now installed and ready to be used on your master node.

Verify the Installation
```
 ansible --version
```

`📜Task 2: Working with Ansible's Hosts File`

In Ansible, the "hosts" file is a configuration file that defines the inventory of target hosts or servers that Ansible can manage.

It is a text file that lists the hostnames or IP addresses of the target systems on which Ansible will perform tasks or execute playbooks.

It allows you to organize and group hosts into different categories, such as development, production, or specific functional roles like web servers or database servers.

The host file is located at /etc/ansible/hosts by default, but you can specify a different path using the -i option when executing Ansible commands or playbooks.

Read the Hosts File: You can view and edit the Ansible hosts file using a text editor like Vim:
```
 sudo vim /etc/ansible/hosts
```
The host file typically has the following structure:
```
 [group_name]
 hostname1
 hostname2
 hostname3

 [another_group_name]
 hostname4
 hostname5
```
In this example, "group_name" and "another_group_name" represent groups of hosts, and the hostnames listed underneath each group are the individual target systems.

You can define multiple groups and include hosts in different groups based on your infrastructure setup.
View Host Inventory: To view the current host inventory configured in Ansible, you can use the following command:
```
 ansible-inventory --list -y
```
This command will display a YAML-formatted list of hosts and their attributes, including the hostnames, IP addresses, and any other defined variables or group memberships.

`📜Task 3: Setting Up Additional EC2 Instances and Pinging Nodes`

In this task, we'll set up two additional EC2 instances, which will act as nodes. These nodes will be managed by Ansible from the master node. Follow these steps:

Create EC2 Instances: Set up two new EC2 instances on AWS using the same private keys as the previous instance (the master node). Ensure they are running and accessible via SSH

Copy Private Key: Copy the private key file used to access the master node to your local machine (if it's not already there). You'll need this key to authenticate with the new nodes.

 cd .ssh #on master server
 vim ansible_key #Open ansible-key.pem file and Copy its content from local to paste
 cat ansible_key #verify copy has done or not
 chmod 600 ansible_key

Ping Nodes: To verify that Ansible can communicate with the new nodes, use the Ansible ping module. Replace <node_ip> with the IP address of one of your new EC2 instances and <private_key_path> with the path to the copied private key file.

So let's first configure host file as per commands mentioned in the Task#02

Which Python interpreter does Ansible employ?

By default, Ansible presumes it will locate a /usr/bin/python on your remote system, which should be either Python 2 with a version of 2.6 or higher or Python 3 with a version of 3.5 or higher.

You can modify this behavior by setting the ansible_python_interpreter inventory variable for a specific host, which will instruct Ansible to replace the Python interpreter with the provided value instead.

Inventory Once you've added the hosts to the file, You can use the "ansible-inventory" command to verify the roster of hosts that Ansible is capable of overseeing.

Now, we will attempt to determine whether the connection has been successfully established by employing the Ping Command.

If everything is set up correctly, Ansible will return a "pong" response, indicating that it can communicate with the nodes.
```
 ansible all -m ping
 #OR
 ansible all -m ping -u ubuntu
 #OR
 ansible all -m ping -i <path of hosts> --key-file=~<private_key_path>
```

Congratulations!💥 You've successfully installed Ansible on your master node, configured the hosts file, set up additional EC2 instances as nodes, and verified Ansible's connectivity with those nodes.

🌈Conclusion

Ansible is a versatile and powerful automation tool that simplifies IT operations through configuration management, application deployment, and provisioning. In this guide, we explored key tasks to get you started:

We installed Ansible on an AWS EC2 instance, making it ready for automation tasks.
We examined Ansible's hosts file to define target hosts and groups, enabling organized management.
We set up additional EC2 instances as nodes and established communication with them using Ansible's ping module, verifying that Ansible is ready to orchestrate tasks.

Happy learning🎉 **& may your cloud journey be filled with exciting discoveries!**🎊

Thank you for joining us on this exciting Day 55 of the 90 Days of DevOps challenge. I hope you found the information helpful and insightful.💥

So please keep yourself updated with my latest insights and articles on DevOps 🚀 by following me on :

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Day 55: Understanding Configuration Management with Ansible🚀

Day#55 Of 90 Days Of DevOps Challenge

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