🚀 Ansible Automation Mastery: Infrastructure as Code with Terraform & Ansible

A Comprehensive Guide to Setting Up Ansible on AWS EC2 with Terraform Provisioning

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📌 Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Ansible
2. Why Use Ansible?
3. Local Installation Guide
4. Lab Setup: Terraform + AWS EC2
5. Ansible Installation & Configuration
6. Ansible Inventory & Host Management
7. Verification & Testing
8. Next Steps & Advanced Automation
9. Visual Workflow Diagram

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🤖 Introduction to Ansible

Ansible is an open-source automation engine that simplifies:
✅ Configuration Management (Consistent server setups)
✅ Application Deployment (CI/CD pipelines)
✅ Orchestration (Multi-tier workflows)
✅ Security & Compliance (Automated hardening)

🔹 Agentless → Uses SSH/WinRM (No extra software on nodes).
🔹 Idempotent → Safe to rerun (No unintended side effects).
🔹 YAML-Based → Easy-to-write playbooks.

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⚡ Why Use Ansible?

Feature	Traditional Approach	Ansible Approach
Deployment Speed	Manual, Slow	Automated, Fast
Error-Prone?	High (Human mistakes)	Low (Consistent automation)
Scalability	Difficult (Manual configs)	Easy (Reusable playbooks)
Security	Inconsistent	Enforced via automation

💡 Use Case: Automate web server deployments, database setups, cloud provisioning, and security patches with minimal effort.

How Ansible Works

graph LR
    A[Control Node] -->|SSH| B[Managed Node 1]
    A -->|SSH| C[Managed Node 2]
    A -->|SSH| D[Managed Node 3]

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💻 Local Installation Guide

Linux Installation

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ansible -y

# RHEL/CentOS
sudo yum install ansible -y

# Verify
ansible --version

macOS Installation

# Using Homebrew
brew install ansible

# Verify
ansible --version

Windows (WSL) Installation

1. Install WSL:

   wsl --install

2. Install Ubuntu from Microsoft Store
3. Open WSL and run:

   sudo apt update && sudo apt install ansible -y

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🛠 Lab Setup: Terraform + AWS EC2

🔹 Step 1: Terraform for EC2 Provisioning

We’ll deploy 4 instances (1 Ansible Master + 3 Managed Nodes).

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main.tf

# Ansible Master Node
resource "aws_instance" "ansible_master" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0" # Ubuntu 20.04
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  key_name      = "terra-key-ansible"
  tags = { Name = "Ansible-Control-Node" }
}

# Managed Nodes (3x)
resource "aws_instance" "managed_nodes" {
  count         = 3
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  key_name      = "terra-key-ansible"
  tags = { Name = "Managed-Node-${count.index + 1}" }
}

🔸 Apply Terraform

terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply -auto-approve

📥 Ansible Installation & Configuration

🔹 Step 2: Install Ansible on Master Node

# Update & Install Ansible
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y ansible

# Verify Installation
ansible --version

✅ Expected Output:

ansible [core 2.12.x]
  config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
  python version = 3.8.10

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📂 Ansible Inventory & Host Management

🔹 Step 3: Configure Hosts & SSH Keys

mkdir -p ~/keys && chmod 700 ~/keys
vim ~/keys/terra-key-ansible.pem  # Paste your private key
chmod 400 ~/keys/terra-key-ansible.pem

🔹 Step 4: Modify /etc/ansible/hosts

[web_servers]
web1 ansible_host=<IP1>
web2 ansible_host=<IP2>
web3 ansible_host=<IP3>

[web_servers:vars]
ansible_user=ubuntu
ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3
ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/home/ubuntu/keys/terra-key-ansible.pem

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✔ Verification & Testing

🔹 Check Inventory

ansible-inventory --list --yaml

Output:

all:
  children:
    web_servers:
      hosts:
        web1: { ansible_host: 10.0.1.10 }
        web2: { ansible_host: 10.0.1.11 }
        web3: { ansible_host: 10.0.1.12 }

🔹 Test Connectivity

ansible all -m ping

✅ Success Response:

web1 | SUCCESS => { "ping": "pong" }
web2 | SUCCESS => { "ping": "pong" }
web3 | SUCCESS => { "ping": "pong" }

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🚀 Next Steps & Advanced Automation

📌 Ad-Hoc Commands

ansible all -a "free -h"  # Check memory
ansible all -a "df -h"    # Check disk space

📌 Create Your First Playbook (deploy_nginx.yml)

---
- name: Install & Start Nginx
  hosts: web_servers
  tasks:
    - name: Install Nginx
      apt: name=nginx state=present
    - name: Start Nginx
      service: name=nginx state=started

▶ Run Playbook:

ansible-playbook deploy_nginx.yml

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📊 Visual Workflow Diagram

graph TD
    A[Terraform Apply] -->|Creates| B[4x EC2 Instances]
    B --> C[Ansible Master]
    B --> D[Managed Node 1]
    B --> E[Managed Node 2]
    B --> F[Managed Node 3]
    C -->|SSH Keys| D
    C -->|Ansible Playbooks| E
    C -->|Automation| F

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🔗 Resources

📚 Ansible Documentation
📚 Terraform AWS Provider
📚 Ansible Galaxy (Pre-built Roles)

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🎯 Key Takeaways

✔ Infrastructure as Code (IaC) → Terraform + Ansible = Full Automation
✔ Agentless & Scalable → Manage 100s of servers with minimal setup.
✔ YAML Simplicity → No complex scripting needed.

🚀 Now go automate everything! 🚀