Working with Ansible and AWS together. Provisioning servers, setting up Cloudwatch alarms automatically, setting up Route53 records and a simple Autoscaling workflow.

1. Ansible with AWS
from EC2 to Autoscale

2. Bringing Ansible to the Cloud
Static/Dynamic Inventories
Scripted EC2 Provision
Route53 (DNS)
CloudWatch Alerts
Autoscaling Workflow
Demo
1 2

3. Allan Denot
∙ 1 year experience with Ansible
∙ 2 years experience with AWS
∙ DevOps Engineer at cammy.com (previously Suncorp)
∙ Co-founder of spikenode.com
@denot allandenot.com

4. Allan Denot @denot allandenot.com
∙ Brazilian
∙ 4 years in Australia

5. Static Inventory

6. Static Inventory
[webservers]
ws1.catcorp.com ansible_ssh_host=10.0.0.1
---
- hosts: webservers
tasks:
- feed: target=cat
feed.yml
hosts

7. Dynamic Inventory

8. Dynamic Inventory
Available with Ansible
Uses python’s boto library
Returns json
ec2.py

9. Dynamic Inventory
feed.yml
---
- hosts: tag_Type_webservers
tasks:
- feed: target=cat
Servers are
automatically grouped
by any tag.

10. Dynamic Inventory
ansible-playbook -i ec2.py feed.yml
executable
./ec2.py | less
./ec2.py --refresh-cache | less

11. Dynamic Inventory
tag_Type_webservers
security_group_WebserverSG
type_t2_micro
key_AdminKey
vpc_id_vpc-0000000
ap-southeast-2a
You can group by
almost everything.
security_group_WebserverSG:!type_t2_micro
Select all servers that have security group “WebserverSG” and are NOT of the type t2.micro
Examples:
Or, you can combine:

12. Dynamic + Static Inventory

13. Dynamic + Static Inventories
Yes, you can use both together.
mkdir inventory
mv hosts inventory/
mv ec2.py inventory/
ansible-playbook -i inventory feed.yml
it’s a folder!

14. Scripted EC2 Provisioning

15. Scripted EC2 Provisioning
- name: Provision EC2 Box
local_action:
module: ec2
key_name: "{{ ec2_keypair }}"
group_id: "{{ ec2_security_group }}"
instance_type: "{{ ec2_instance_type }}"
image: "{{ ec2_image }}"
vpc_subnet_id: "{{ ec2_subnet_ids|random }}"
region: "{{ ec2_region }}"
instance_tags: '{"Name":"{{ec2_tag_Name}}"}'
assign_public_ip: yes
wait: true
count: 1
volumes:
- device_name: /dev/sda1
device_type: gp2
volume_size: "{{ ec2_volume_size }}"
delete_on_termination: true
register: ec2
vars:
- ec2_keypair: "XX-KEYPAIR-NAME-XX"
- ec2_security_group: "sg-XXXXXXXX"
- ec2_instance_type: "t2.micro"
- ec2_image: "ami-1711732d"
- ec2_subnet_ids: [ 'subnet-XXXXXXXX', 'subnet-XXXXXXXX' ]
- ec2_region: "ap-southeast-2"
- ec2_tag_Name: "Webserver"
- ec2_volume_size: "8"
All code will be in my repository
Check URL at the end of talk

16. DNS

17. DNS
Creating or updating a DNS record based on a tag
- local_action: >
route53
command=create
zone=yourawesomedomain.com
record={{ec2_tag_Name}}.yourawesomedomain.com
type=A
ttl=300
value={{ec2_ip_address}}
overwrite=yes

18. Monitoring

19. Monitoring
Example:
Alerting when CPU Credits are low
on t2.* machines

20. Monitoring
All code will be in my repository
Check URL at the end of talk
---
- hosts: type_t2_small:type_t2_medium
connection: local
gather_facts: false
user: root
tasks:
- name: Create Alarm
ec2_metric_alarm:
state: present
region: "{{ec2_region}}"
name: "{{ec2_tag_Name}} - CPU Credit LOW"
metric: "CPUCreditBalance"
namespace: "AWS/EC2"
statistic: Average
comparison: "<="
threshold: 100.0
period: 300
evaluation_periods: 2
description: "CPU credit dropped below 100"
dimensions: {'InstanceId':'{{ec2_id}}'}
alarm_actions: ["MYSNSACTION"]
insufficient_data_actions: ["MYSNSACTION"]
ok_actions: ["MYSNSACTION"]

21. Autoscaling and Demo

22. Tag
instance as
test passed
Test app*Install
packages,
deploy app,
etc.
Using
ansible ec2
module
Autoscaling Workflow
Create EC2 Configure Test
pre-production/staging environment
* to be covered in a future meetup or blog post

23. Autoscaling Workflow
Bake AMI from EC2
Create new Launch
Configuration
Update Autoscaling Group
with new LC

24. Questions?
Links
github.com/adenot/blog-ansible-autoscaling
allandenot.com
spikenode.com