This is a solution for the Ansible Assignment on Udemy https://www.udemy.com/learn-ansible-advanced
This assignment tests the students knowledge on deploying a distributed web application on cloud using fully automated Ansible playbooks. The solution is shared to the instructor and student community using github repository and feedback will be given.
A full video demonstration of the solution is under development. Will update once ready.
Below is my solution to the problem.
I chose Google Cloud Platform as I found it easiest to get started. I created a temporary account to get a $300 credit and utilized it as development environment.
I set up a local VM on Oracle Virtual Box as my Ansible Controller. There are some pre-requisites required on the Ansible Controller system to work with Google Cloud. Details are documented here Once the Ansible Controller was setup I proceeded to develop my project.
I decided to use tasks file for deploying VMs and create my own roles to configure those VMs with Application.
- Tasks: A role to deploy necessary compute instances on on Google Cloud
- Roles: ansible-role-mysql: A role to install and configure MySQL on any given systems
- Roles: ansible-role-flask-web: A role to install and configure Flask application on multiple
- Tasks: Configure native Google Load Balancing and firewalls
- Tasks: Send email notification
Group Variables to have following properties:
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project_id: ID of my GCP project
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service_account_email: Service Account to connect to GCP
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credentials_file: Credentials file to connect to GCP
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num_web_instances: Number of web instances to deploy
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db_name: Database name
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db_user: Database user to create
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db_password: Password for the Database user
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machine_type: Type of machine to deploy eg: n1-standard-1
- image: Image of instance to deploy debian-7 -
instance_list: An array containing list of servers to deploy
- web-server-1,web-server-2 - db-server -
db_name: Database name
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db_user: Database user
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db_user_password: Database user password
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ansible_user: User to connect to Compute Instances using gcloud compute ssh
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ansible_ssh_private_key_file: Private key file to connect to Compute Instances using gcloud compute ssh