Ansible lab

This project is a lab environment designed to practice core Ansible concepts. It uses bare-metal VPS instances as target servers to deploy multiple instances of a simple Node.js application, along with a load balancer to distribute traffic between them.

Design

This lab simulates a real-world infrastructure scenario to practice Ansible automation using bare-metal VPS instances. The setup includes application servers, a load balancer, Docker provisioning, and strict access control.

Key Components:

1. Bare-Metal VPS Environment. The entire lab runs on bare-metal VPS instances to mimic real deployment environments.

2. Docker Provisioning. Each instance is automatically provisioned with Docker using Ansible.

3. Application Layer Multiple VPS instances are used to run a simple Node.js application. These application containers are not exposed to the public and are isolated from external access.

4. Reverse Proxy for Application. Each Node.js instance includes a reverse proxy (NGINX) listening on port 80. This proxy:

   • Forwards traffic to the local Node.js container
   • Is configured to only accept requests from the load balancer's IP
   • Rejects all other incoming traffic automatically

5. Centralized Load Balancer. A dedicated VPS instance runs an NGINX load balancer that distributes traffic across all Node.js application instances.

CI/CD Automation with GitHub Actions

This lab also includes two automated workflows implemented using GitHub Actions:

1. Provisioning Workflow

   This workflow accepts a list of IP addresses for newly created VPS instances and performs the initial provisioning. It:

   • Creates an Ansible user on each VPS

   • Sets up SSH key authentication

   • Prepares the instances for further configuration

2. Deployment Workflow

   This workflow installs Docker on all VPS instances, dynamically generates the Ansible inventory file based on provided IPs, and runs the necessary Docker containers:

   • Node.js application instances on designated VPS hosts

   • Reverse proxies configured to only allow traffic from the load balancer

   • A centralized load balancer to distribute traffic across application nodes