Deploying Webpage using the ansible-playbook

Automation is the backbone of modern infrastructure management. Among the automation tools available, Ansible stands out due to its simplicity and power. In this blog, we'll demonstrate creating an Ansible playbook to install NGINX and deploy a sample webpage.

Introduction to the Project

Our goal is to automate the deployment of an NGINX server and serve a custom webpage without any manual intervention. We'll use Ansible, a configuration management tool that communicates over SSH and doesn't require any agent installation on remote hosts.

Prerequisites

1. Ansible is installed on your control machine.

2. A target server (or local machine) where you want to install NGINX.

3. SSH access from the control machine to the target server.

Follow my previous blog to configure all Prerequisites https://kshitijaa.hashnode.dev/understanding-configuration-management-with-ansible-1

Step 1: Setting up the Inventory

Your inventory file (inventory.ini) should look something like this:

web_server ansible_host=3.87.241.176 ansible_ssh_private_key_file=/home/ubuntu/keys/ansible-key.pem ansible_ssh_user=ubuntu

Replace host with your server's Public IP and ansible_ssh_user with the appropriate SSH username.

Now, we will set the permission as 600 for this file

sudo chmod 600 /home/ubuntu/keys/inventory.ini

Use the below Ansible ad hoc command to ping the servers:

ansible web_server -i inventory.ini -m ping

Step 2: Writing the Playbook

Create a file called nginx.yml and let's dive into the content:

- name: Configure Website with nginx
  hosts: web_server
  become: True
  tasks:
    - name: install nginx
      apt: name=nginx update_cache=yes

    - name: copy index.html
      template: src=./sample.html dest=/usr/share/nginx/html/index.html
        mode=0644

Make sure to have a sample.html file in the same directory as your playbook, or adjust the src path accordingly.

Step 3: Running the Playbook

Execute the playbook with:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini nginx.yml

Step 4: Verification

Visit the IP address of your server on a web browser. You should see the content of your sample.html displayed.

Conclusion

In just a few steps, we have automated the deployment of an NGINX server and a custom webpage using Ansible. This approach is scalable; with minimal adjustments, you can deploy to multiple servers or incorporate more complex configurations.

The power of Ansible lies in its simplicity and readability. By using playbooks, infrastructure as code becomes an easily attainable reality. As always, ensure you thoroughly test your playbooks in a staging environment before deploying to production.

Happy automating! Thanks for reading! 😃🙏