Book Image

Learn Ansible

By : Russ McKendrick
Book Image

Learn Ansible

By: Russ McKendrick

Overview of this book

Ansible has grown from a small, open source orchestration tool to a full-blown orchestration and configuration management tool owned by Red Hat. Its powerful core modules cover a wide range of infrastructures, including on-premises systems and public clouds, operating systems, devices, and services—meaning it can be used to manage pretty much your entire end-to-end environment. Trends and surveys say that Ansible is the first choice of tool among system administrators as it is so easy to use. This end-to-end, practical guide will take you on a learning curve from beginner to pro. You'll start by installing and configuring the Ansible to perform various automation tasks. Then, we'll dive deep into the various facets of infrastructure, such as cloud, compute and network infrastructure along with security. By the end of this book, you'll have an end-to-end understanding of Ansible and how you can apply it to your own environments.

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Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Get in touch
Free Chapter
1
An Introduction to Ansible
An Introduction to Ansible
Ansible's story
Ansible versus other tools
Summary
Further reading
2
Installing and Running Ansible
Installing and Running Ansible
Technical requirements
Installing Ansible
Launching a virtual machine
An introduction to playbooks
Summary
Questions
Further reading
3
The Ansible Commands
The Ansible Commands
Technical requirements
Inbuilt commands
Third-party commands
Summary
Questions
Further reading
4
Deploying a LAMP Stack
Deploying a LAMP Stack
Technical requirements
Playbook structure
LAMP stack
Summary
Questions
Further reading
5
Deploying WordPress
Deploying WordPress
Technical requirements
Preinstallation tasks
WordPress installation tasks
Running the WordPress playbook
Summary
Questions
Further reading
6
Targeting Multiple Distributions
Targeting Multiple Distributions
Technical requirements
Launching multiple Vagrant boxes
Multi-operating system considerations
Adapting the roles
Running the playbook
Summary
Questions
Further reading
7
The Core Network Modules
The Core Network Modules
Technical requirements
Manufacturer and device support
Interacting with a network device
Summary
Questions
Further reading
8
Moving to the Cloud
Moving to the Cloud
Technical requirements
Interacting with DigitalOcean
WordPress on DigitalOcean
Summary
Questions
Further reading
9
Building Out a Cloud Network
Building Out a Cloud Network
Technical requirements
An introduction to AWS
The VPC playbook
Summary
Questions
Further reading
10
Highly Available Cloud Deployments
Highly Available Cloud Deployments
Technical requirements
Planning the deployment
The playbook
Summary
Questions
Further reading
11
Building Out a VMware Deployment
Building Out a VMware Deployment
Technical requirements
An introduction to VMware
The VMware modules
An example playbook
Summary
Questions
Further reading
12
Ansible Windows Modules
Ansible Windows Modules
Technical requirements
Up-and-running
Installing a web server
Interacting with AWS Windows instances
Summary
Questions
Further reading
13
Hardening Your Servers Using Ansible and OpenSCAP
Hardening Your Servers Using Ansible and OpenSCAP
Technical requirements
OpenSCAP
Preparing the host
The playbook
Summary
Questions
Further reading
14
Deploying WPScan and OWASP ZAP
Deploying WPScan and OWASP ZAP
Preparing the boxes
The WordPress playbook
The scan playbook
Summary
Questions
Further reading
15
Introducing Ansible Tower and Ansible AWX
Introducing Ansible Tower and Ansible AWX
Technical requirements
Web-based Ansible
Ansible Tower
Ansible AWX
Summary
Questions
Further reading
16
Ansible Galaxy
Ansible Galaxy
Technical requirements
Introduction to Ansible Galaxy
Jenkins playbook
Publishing a role
Ansible Galaxy commands
Summary
Questions
Further reading
17
Next Steps with Ansible
Next Steps with Ansible
Integrating with third-party services
The Ansible playbook debugger
Real-world examples
Summary
Further reading
18
Assessments
Assessments
Chapter 2, Installing and Running Ansible
Chapter 3, The Ansible Commands
Chapter 4, Deploying a LAMP Stack
Chapter 5, Deploying WordPress
Chapter 6, Targeting Multiple Distributions
Chapter 7, The Core Network Modules
Chapter 8, Moving to the Cloud
Chapter 9, Building Out a Cloud Network
Chapter 10, Highly Available Cloud Deployments
Chapter 11, Building Out a VMware Deployment
Chapter 12, Ansible Windows Modules
Chapter 13, Hardening Your Servers Using Ansible and OpenSCAP
Chapter 14, Deploying WPScan and OWASP ZAP
Chapter 15, Introducing Ansible Tower and Ansible AWX
19
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Ansible Windows Modules

So far, we have been targeting Linux servers. In this chapter, we will take a look at the ever-growing collection of core Ansible modules that support and interact with Windows-based servers. Personally, coming from an almost exclusively macOS and Linux background, it felt a little odd to be using a tool that is not natively supported on Windows to manage Windows.

However, as I am sure you will agree by the end of the chapter, its developers have made the process of introducing Windows workloads into your playbook as seamless and familiar as possible.

In this chapter, we will learn how to build our Windows servers locally using Vagrant and then take our playbooks to the public cloud. We will cover:

  • Enabling features in Windows
  • Launching Windows instances in AWS
  • Creating users
  • Installing third-party packages using Chocolatey
...
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