Exercise-7

7. Configuration Management with Ansible: Basics of Ansible: Inventory, Playbooks, and Modules, Automating Server Configurations with Playbooks, Hands-On: Writing and Running a Basic Playbook.

🎯 Objective:

To understand the basics of Ansible — Inventory, Playbooks, and Modules — and use Playbooks to automate server configurations. This includes setting up a Linux environment using Vagrant and VirtualBox, installed via Chocolatey.

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📘 What is Ansible?

Ansible is an open-source configuration management and automation tool. It helps system administrators and DevOps engineers to automate:

• Software installation and configuration

• Server provisioning

• Application deployment

• System updates and patching

🔑 Key Features of Ansible:

• Agentless: No agent is needed on the target machine. It uses SSH to communicate.

• Simple syntax: Uses YAML to define tasks in Playbooks.

• Idempotent: Running the same playbook multiple times won’t cause unintended changes.

• Modular: Uses built-in modules like apt, yum, copy, service, etc.

🔧 Ansible Components:

Component	Description
Inventory	List of target machines to automate
Modules	Reusable scripts used to perform actions
Playbook	YAML file that contains tasks to be executed
Task	A single unit of work to be executed on a host

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💻 Part 1: Setting Up the Environment on Windows Using Chocolatey

🍫 Step 1: Install Chocolatey

Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; `
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; `
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Close and reopen PowerShell after installation.

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📦 Step 2: Install VirtualBox and Vagrant via Chocolatey

choco install virtualbox -y
choco install vagrant -y

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📂 Part 2: Create and Configure a Linux VM using Vagrant

📁 Step 3: Create a Project Directory

mkdir ansible-vm
cd ansible-vm

📄 Step 4: Initialize a Vagrant Project

vagrant init ubuntu/bionic64

This creates a Vagrantfile.

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✏️ Step 5: Edit the Vagrantfile

Update the file to look like:

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/bionic64"
  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    vb.memory = "2048"
    vb.cpus = 2
  end
end

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▶️ Step 6: Start the Virtual Machine

vagrant up

🔐 Step 7: SSH into the VM

vagrant ssh

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🔧 Part 3: Install Ansible inside the Linux VM

Once inside the VM:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ansible -y

Verify:

ansible --version

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🧪 Part 4: Write and Run Your First Ansible Playbook

📂 Step 8: Create Inventory File

Inside the VM, create inventory.ini:

[web]
127.0.0.1 ansible_connection=local

📜 Step 9: Create a Playbook

Create setup_webserver.yml:

---
- name: Setup Apache Web Server
  hosts: web
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Install Apache
      apt:
        name: apache2
        state: present
        update_cache: yes

    - name: Enable and start Apache
      service:
        name: apache2
        state: started
        enabled: yes

    - name: Deploy custom HTML page
      copy:
        content: "<h1>Welcome to Ansible Web Server!</h1>"
        dest: /var/www/html/index.html

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▶️ Step 10: Run the Playbook

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini setup_webserver.yml

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🌐 Part 5: Verify the Web Server

✅ Check Web Server from inside VM:

curl http://localhost

Expected output:

<h1>Welcome to Ansible Web Server!</h1>

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✅ Conclusion:

In this experiment, you have:

• Installed VirtualBox and Vagrant using Chocolatey

• Created a Linux VM using Vagrant

• Installed Ansible and learned its core components

• Wrote and executed a basic Ansible Playbook

• Deployed a simple web server automatically

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📎 Learn More: