This document discusses using Ansible to keep infrastructure code simple. It begins with an introduction to the presenter and their experience. It then provides an overview of Ansible, including what it is, how inventories and playbooks work, and some best practices when using it. The document demonstrates setting up a simple "hello world" application using Ansible and concludes by emphasizing keeping things simple when using Ansible.

1. Keep InfraCode simple
with Ansible
Introduction and best practices
jmolero@know-center.at José Manuel Molero
@jmlero Infracoders Meetup
Graz, 11.04.2017
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2. >ls –l presentation
oIntroduction
oAnsible
• About
• Inventory
• Playbooks
• Roles
• Advices
oDemo
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3. >whoami
oSystems Engineer with 8 years of experience
• Linux environments. Compute clusters. Cloud. Big Data.
Open source software
oFrom Almería (Spain)
o2014 - Wien
• CeMM - Research Center for Molecular Medicine
o2016 - Graz
• Know-Center
• www.know-center.at
@jmlero linkedin.com/in/jmolero github.com/jmlero 3

4. © Know-Center GmbH • Research Center for Data-Driven Business and Big Data Analytics • 2017
KNOW-CENTER GMBH
Austria's leading research center for
Data-driven Business und Big Data Analytics
* COMET is an Austrian funding program
that supports a sustainable knowledge
transfer from science to industry.
> 80 Researchers
> 600 COMET* & industrial projects
> 30 international EU projects
Founded in 2001
Located at the Technical University of Graz
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5. © Know-Center GmbH • Research Center for Data-Driven Business and Big Data Analytics • 2017
Big Data Lab
We help you to gain insights from your data!
CONSULTING DATA ANALYTICS TRAINING
DATA ACQUISITION
Formats, Standards &
Legal issues
PREPARATION
Cleaning, Normalizing, Integration &
Loading
(DISTRIBUTED) ANALYTICS
Utilizing our Hadoop Cluster or other
cloud-based solution
BIG DATA INTRODUCTION
Concepts, Methods, Technologies and
tools around Big Data
DATA VALUE CHECK
Feasibility study about kind, volume and
quality of your data
DATA-DRIVEN BUSINESS
Identifying new business models that can
be added to your value chain
BIG DATA FOR DEVELOPERS
Utilizing the Apache Hadoop ecosystem
for Big Data Analytics
APACHE HADOOP ESSENTIALS
Setup and administration of
Apache Hadoop Clusters
DATA ANALYTICS FUNDAMENTALS
Basics of Data Science and
Machine Learning
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6. Disclaimer
o Ansible is a great tool
• But is not perfect
• With pros and cons
o And is not the only tool
• Also learning chef and puppet
o (Unfortunately) Ansible Inc doesn’t pay me
• Focus only on the open source side of the project
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7. >vim Ansible/Readme.md
oAnsible is an open source automation tool for (cloud) provisioning,
application deployment, and configuration management
oAcquired by RedHat in 2015
• https://www.redhat.com/en/about/blog/why-red-hat-acquired-ansible
oThe name "Ansible" references a fictional instantaneous
hyperspace communication system (as featured in Orson Scott
Card's Ender's Game)
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8. But why Ansible
Simple Powerful Agentless
Radically simple
Easy to read
Easy to start
Designed for multi-tier
developments
Cloud provisioning
Deploy everywhere
from everywhere
Minimal requirements
Agentless architecture
Reliable and secure
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9. >diff Ansible Chef Puppet
Ansible Chef Puppet
Initial release 2012
Push
Agentless and Masterless
Playbook
YAML (+Jinja2 templates)
Initial release 2009
Pull
Master/Client
Recipe
Ruby DSL
Initial release 2005
Pull
Master/Client
Manifest
Custom
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10. Schema
Infrastructure as a Code
Inventory
Playbooks
SSH
SSH
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11. >man inventory
oDescription of the nodes that can be managed by Ansible
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12. Hello world (v0.1)
>yum install ansible
>ansible localhost -a “yum install httpd –y; systemctl start httpd”
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13. >help modules
oAnsible comes with hundred of modules
• http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/list_of_all_modules.html
oAvoid using commands
• Modules command and shell as last resort
oModules return reports as JSON
• State, changes, info
• Easier to manage and debug
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14. Hello world (v0.2)
>yum install ansible
>ansible localhost –m yum -a “state=present name=httpd”
>ansible localhost –m service -a “state=started name=httpd”
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15. >ansible-playbook -h
o Playbooks express configurations,
deployment and orchestration
o The Playbook format is YAML
o Each Playbook maps a group of hosts to a
set of roles
• Each role is represented by calls to Ansible tasks
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16. Hello world (2) (v0.3)
>vim hello_world.yml
---
- hosts: localhost
tasks:
- name: Install apache2
yum:
name: httpd
state: latest
notify:
- start apache
handlers:
- name: start apache
service:
name: httpd
state: started
>ansible-playbook hello_world.yml
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17. Playbooks_roles
o Playbooks composed by tasks and handlers
o How to organize your playbooks?
• Use roles
o Roles are ways of automatically load certain vars_files, tasks, and
handlers based on a known file structure
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18. >tree ansible_playbooks
>ansible-galaxy init
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19. >git commit –a
o If you can make it simple, make it simple
o If something feels complicated, it probably is (back to number 1)
o Use simple, small and focused roles
o Make it readable (for you after 1 year)
o YAML files. Not much documentation required
o Auto-descriptive playbooks, files, variables and tasks
o Always define state (latest, present, absent)
o Native YAML style (but is not mandatory)
o Editor (syntax highlight) (atom, sublime, vscode)
o Version control
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20. >demo.exe (monitoring platform)
Infrastructure as a Code
Inventory
Playbooks
es-server
client01
metricbeats elasticsearch kibana
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github.com/jmlero

21. The elastic stack
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22. Vielen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit
Insert: any_question.jpg
jmolero@know-center.at José Manuel Molero
@jmlero Infracoders Meetup
Graz, 11.04.2017
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