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Create your first playbook

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Objective

Create an Ansible playbook that accomplishes the following tasks on a set of target servers:

  1. Install Nginx.

  2. Configure a simple HTML page to display "Hello from Ansible!"

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Instructions

  1. Set Up Your Environment:

    • Ensure you have Ansible installed on your control machine.

    • Create a directory for your practice playbooks (e.g., ~/ansible-practice).

    • Copy your existing inventory file (if you have one) into this directory.

  2. Create Your Nginx Playbook:

    • Create a new playbook file named nginx-playbook.yml in your ansible-practice directory:

      vi ~/ansible-practice/nginx-playbook.yml

    • Add the following content to your nginx-playbook.yml file:

      ---
- hosts: webservers
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Install Nginx
      apt:
        name: nginx
        state: present

    - name: Create HTML file
      copy:
        content: "<html><body><h1>Hello from Ansible!</h1></body></html>"
        dest: /var/www/html/index.html

    • Save and close the file.

  3. Run the Playbook:

    • Execute the playbook on the target servers (replace with your own inventory file and administrative user):

      ansible-playbook -i inventory nginx-playbook.yml

    • Verify that Nginx is installed and the HTML page is accessible by opening a web browser and navigating to http://your-server-ip.

You've successfully created an Ansible playbook to set up an Nginx web server!

Let's explore further, let us see how to do the same in CentOS.

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CentOS Example: Install Nginx

Here in Ubuntu, we used the apt module, for Centos it was the yum module.

Let's enhance the CentOS playbook to start the Nginx service and enable it for auto-start.

Explanation:

  1. The systemd module is used to manage services. We added an entry to start the Nginx service (nginx).

  2. The enabled: yes line ensures the Nginx start on system boot.

Now, when you run this playbook,

  • Install Nginx

  • Copy the HTML content

  • Start the Nginx service

  • Enable it for auto-start

Remember to adapt the instructions to your specific environment. Happy automating! 😊

For more details, explore Ansible playbooks and modules in the official Ansible documentationarrow-up-right.

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