Learn the concepts and develop the skills to be a true Ansible artist and use it inside and outside the box. This book applies key concepts immediately while building up your Ansible skills layer by layer through easy to grasp examples and engaging projects. You'll also think about security, why testing is important, and how to use version control safely.
As a beginner to Ansible, you'll be guided step-by-step through creating your first Ansible playbook to deploying your first server and writing more complex cross-dependency playbooks. From the first line of code to the last, you'll constantly iterate and simplify your playbooks, iwhile taking on more complex topics as you construct a full Wordpress website stack consisting of a database, web servers, and load balancer. This book will prompt you to think about how these fit together and will explain what to do to ensure maintainability long into the future.
Don't just use Ansible. Completely change how you go about provisioning, configuring, and managing servers, applications, and their dependencies with this powerful, open source automation tool. In exchange for this power and efficiency, Ansible demands a very different way of thinking about resources and how they all fit together. This can be hard to get your head around if you've never done it before. Every step of the way, Beginning Ansible Concepts and Application show you best practices so that you can confidently start using Ansible right away.
What You'll Learn
- Set up an Ansible environment
- Create and run playbooks
- Organize groups of variables, vaults, roles, and tasks to ensure your playbooks are scalable
- Protect secrets using Ansible Vaults
- Automate the build of a Wordpress website
Who This Book Is For
Developers looking for a better way to manage their servers other than by logging in and typing commands. Also enthusiasts who want to learn not just how to use Ansible but how to use it correctly and confidently.
Shaun Smith is a Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS) and holds degrees in Computer Science and Psychology. He has a wealth of experience across a broad range of technology, which he combines in novel ways to build out industry-leading, scalable and highly-secure solutions to complex problems. He evangelises simple, elegant and secure designs and these days is focusing on making the Internet a safer place to be and up-skilling the next generation.
Peter Membrey is a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Chartered IT Professional and a Chartered Engineer with nearly a quarter of a century in the field. He has a doctorate in engineering and a masters degree in IT specialising in Information Security. He's co-authored over a dozen books, a number of research papers on a variety of topics and has recently been awarded the Distinguished Contributor award by the IEEE Computer Society.
Autorentext
Peter Membrey is a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Chartered IT Professional and a Chartered Engineer who holds a Master's degree in IT specializing in Information Security. He holds a current RHCE and had the honor of working for and with Red Hat for many years. He is currently studying for an Engineering Doctorate at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University with an interest in precision time keeping and synchronization in IoT devices. He lives in Hong Kong with his wife Sarah and sons Kaydyn and Xandyr. He still can't speak Chinese.
Inhalt
Chapter 1 - Setting the Scene
Foundations of Ansibl
Create an environment
Challenges to come
Chapter 2 - Say Hello to Ansible
Introduce Ansible
History
Tools
Chapter 3 - Getting Ansible and Setting Up the Environment
Download and set up Ansible
Using virtual python environments
Using VirtualBox
Chapter 4 - Your First Steps with Ansible
Play with Ansible
Revision control and security aspects
Python 2 vs 3
Chapter 5 - Run Your First playbook
Create and run your first playbook
Structure of a playbook
Put servers under source control
Chapter 6 - Designing an Inventory
Using localhost
Inventories
Chapter 7 - Setting Your Sights - Target the Servers You Want
Setting up real servers
Playbook skills and inventory skills
Writing the playbook Chapter 8 - Batteries Included - The Core ModulesCore modules
Installing packages, copying config files, and making changes to system config
Web based documentation
Chapter 9 - Gathering Data and the Power of FactsUsing fact gathering
Automatic (implicit) fact-gathering for every playbook
Explicit fact gathering
Stat to gain information on files, directories, and symbolic links
Chapter 10 - The Building Blocks of Ansible - Roles
Chapter 11 - Making Decisions and Controlling Flow
Conditionals
Options
includes and when clauses
Chapter 12 - Repeating YourselfLoops
Syntax
Chapter 13 - Jinja 2 and the Power of Templates
Chapter 14 - Structuring Your Repo for Success
Basic directory structure
Organize groups of variables, vaults, roles, and tasks to ensure your playbooks are scalable
Chapter 15 - Locking Away Your Secrets
Ansible-vaults
Environment specific encrypted stores
Chapter 16 - Extending the Power of Ansible
Creation of custom modules
Module types (actions, filters, callback to name a few)
Hints and tips on when a plugin is the right course of action
Chapter 17 - Dynamically Generating Your InventoryInventory, or CMDB
Inventory source
Simple web service to pull in the ansible inventory at runtime
Meta groups
Chapter 18 - Community
Share playbooks with like-minded sysadmins
Ansible Galaxy
Chapter 19 - Troubleshooting Ansible
Chapter 20 - Other Projects Around AnsiblePOSSIBLE: document interesting projects that make use of Ansible's power, such as ansible-cmdb