Simple ansible playbook

Intro

Running this playbook will provision and configure a single ec2 instance to serve an html file

Requirements

In order to run this playbook you first need is a working Python environment (tested with python 3.6), preferably with pyenv.

Then step into the root directory of this project and run the following command to install the dependencies

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Usage

Configuration

Make a copy of the environment.yml.dist (in vars directory) and name it to whatever you like with .yml extension Then fill the properties accordly:

• aws_region (optional, default: eu-west-1): the AWS region to deploy the resources. Read further to view list of allowed regions
• management_cidr: IP CIDR from which ssh access will be allowed (required by ansible itself, so public IP of computer running this playbook must be in the CIDR). Format example: 8.8.8.0/24

Launch

From the root directory run the following command:

AWS_PROFILE={aws_profile} ansible-playbook deploy.yml --extra-vars "deploy_environment={deploy_environment}"

Replacing the {} placeholders with correct values:

• aws_profile: a valid AWS profile name already in your ~/.aws/credentials file ( Check the following link in order to understand named profiles of AWS CLI https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-config-files.html )
• deploy_environment: the name of the previously created configuration file without extension

Limitations

It is required to have a default VPC in order to deploy this playbook. Only working in the following AWS regions (to allow more regions the corresponding AMI ids should be added to roles/helloworldapp.provisioning/defaults/main.yml):

• eu-west-1 (default)
• eu-west-2
• eu-west-3
• eu-central-1
• us-east-1

AWS Resources created

• Security Group: HTTPs (443) open to the world
• Security Group: SSH (22) open to the CIDR defined in the configuration file
• Key Pair: with the name configured in the configuration or with a default value of "hu-test". The private key will be stored in the root directory of this project. If you delete this file, neither Ansible or you will be able to connect to any instance launched using this key, so be carefully
• EC2 instance: running Amazon Linux 2018.03 AMI
• @TODO Clean resources automatically with a flag?

Access to the Hello World application

The last task in the playbook will show a friendly message with the URL to the application. If accessing from a Browser you will need to allow the use of self-signed certificates The site is protected with http basic auth, the default credentials are:

• username: admin
• password: admin

You can check it the following curl command

curl -k -u admin:admin {url}

* replace {url} with the real URL obtained from the playbook

Improvements

Network resources (VPC, Subnets and RouteTables) could be provisioned prior to create dependant resources to prevent the creation in the default VPC