ansible-ec2-tutorial

Project Overview

This project uses Ansible to automate the provisioning of an AWS EC2 instance and the setup of a security group. It demonstrates the use of Ansible playbooks, roles, and Ansible Vault for secure management of sensitive variables.

Prerequisites

• AWS Account
• Ansible installed on your machine
• AWS CLI installed and configured
• SSH key pair created in AWS (referred to as ansible-keypair in this guide)

Files and Directory Structure

• site.yml: The main playbook that orchestrates the provisioning process.
• inventory/hosts.yml: Inventory file specifying the target host.
• group_vars/all.yml: Contains non-sensitive variable definitions.
• secret.yml: Encrypted file containing sensitive variables like ec2_vpc_id and ec2_subnet_id.
• roles/ec2-setup: Role containing tasks to create a security group and provision EC2 instances.

Setting Up

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd ansible-ec2-tutorial
   

2. Configure AWS CLI:

   Make sure you have AWS CLI installed and configured:

   aws configure
   

3. Create an Ansible Vault:

   To securely store sensitive information like VPC and subnet IDs:

   ansible-vault create secret.yml
   

   Enter the sensitive data:

   ec2_vpc_id: vpc-xxxxxxx
   ec2_subnet_id: subnet-xxxxxxx

4. Update group_vars/all.yml:

   Remove sensitive data and ensure it only contains non-sensitive information:

   ec2_keypair: ansible-keypair
   ec2_instance_type: t2.micro
   ec2_ami: ami-051f8a213df8bc089
   ec2_region: us-east-1
   ec2_security_group_name: ansible-tutorial-sg
   http_port: 80

5. Running the Playbook:

   Execute the main playbook:

   ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts.yml site.yml --ask-vault-pass
   

   Enter the vault password when prompted.

Understanding the Playbook

• The site.yml playbook references the ec2-setup role, which includes tasks to create a security group and provision an EC2 instance using variables defined in group_vars/all.yml and secret.yml.
• The ec2_group task creates a security group allowing all inbound traffic on specified ports.
• The ec2_instance task provisions an EC2 instance with the specified configuration and tags.

Conclusion

This project provides a foundational understanding of using Ansible for AWS resource management while emphasizing best practices for secure variable management with Ansible Vault. For detailed Ansible documentation, visit Ansible Documentation.