Automated Ansible Hosting on Digital Ocean or Linode

Ansible Hosting is an Ansible-based script that purchases a Droplet from Digital Ocean or a Node from Linode and automatically installs a fully-configured web server on the new Droplet. To run this script, you need an Ansible control server which could either be your laptop or a Droplet on Digital Ocean. Using this script requires a Digital Ocean account, and it will cost money because it creates a new Droplet for you.

This script is the foundation for open-source web hosting. This script is made possible by the work of many amazing folks and it's given away in the same spirit. Use it if you like. If you do, please consider sharing your code back to the project. A link to http://www.greboggs.com would be nice too. But, that is, of course, optional.

Requirements

This script requires a paid Digital Ocean account with a Digital Ocean Personal Access Token.

Using this Script

Once you have setup a control server, this script allows you to automatically create and remove fully-configured web servers. The steps below will get you up and running:

Create a Control Server

This guide will walk you through installing an Ansible Control Server. Set up a Ubuntu Server. Enable automatic security updates. I use the unattended-upgrades method.

Add Your Digital Ocean API Key

This script requires a Digital Ocean API Key to create a Droplet. If you remove it after testing, you will incur only a small fee. If you don't want to be billed, you

echo 'export DO_API_KEY=<YOURKEY>' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Install Linode Requirements

If you're going to use the Linode script, you must install some extra items. Including your pubkey as a string because I couldn't get the Linode module to load a pubkey file.

sudo apt-get install python-pycurl
pip install --upgrade pip
sudo pip install linode-python
echo 'export PUB_KEY=<YOURKEY>' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

NOTE You must enable metered billing manually if you wish to use hourly billing. There is no remove script for Linode and each run creates a new Node. You must manually delete your Nodes if you don't want them. Backups are not enabled by default.

Install Ansible

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ansible

Configure Ansible

sudo apt-get install python-pip
sudo pip install dopy
git clone git@github.com:Greg-Boggs/ansible-hosting.git
cd ansible-hosting

Add Ansible Galaxy Roles

This script relies on Ansible Galaxy Roles on your control server. So, before running the script, install them!

ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml --force

Run the Script to Create a New Web Server

Now, run the script and you have a fully configured web server ready to go!

ansible-playbook digitalocean.yml

Remove the new Droplet

This command will delete your new server and prevent you from incuring any charges if you are just testing this script.

ansible-playbook remove.yml

Future Plans

I plan to add support for Amazon in the future.