Thesis project for TalTech

Title: Automated infrastructure deployment with Ansible for small scale web app company

Requirements

• AWS root account access.
• Ansible >=2.9.7, Python >= 3.6.9.
• Preferably a domain, which DNS is managed by AWS.

During the development, Ubuntu 18.04 virutal machine was used as a Ansible Control node. To install required packages, run the following commands:

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt install software-properties-common -y && sudo apt-add-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible && sudo apt install ansible python-pip python3-pip -y
$ pip install botocore boto boto3 zabbix-api
$ pip3 install botocore boto boto3 zabbix-api

Getting Started

1. Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/karlmjogila/thesis-aws.git
2. Create a programmatic user in AWS IAM->Users->Add user.

• Create a username and make sure access type is “Programmatic access”
• Select the “Attach existing policies directly” tab and choose the following policies: AmazonEC2FullAccess, AmazonVPCFullAccess, AmazonS3FullAccess, AmazonRoute53FullAccess, AWSCertificateManagerFullAccess.
• Click Next -> Next -> Make sure the correct policies are applied -> Create user.
• Make sure to download the .csv file containing both access keys and store the credentials in a password manager. They will be needed later.

3. Generate the Ansible Vault file. The required key-value pairs are stored in keys.example file. NB! Use a secure password for encryption, as this file will contain sensitive data. ansible-vault create keys
4. Specify the required paramaters in group_vars/all.yml file.
5. Run the playbook ansible-playbook site.yml --ask-vault-pass

Adding virtual hosts

To add virtual hosts, you can either choose between issuing them on an instance level or cluster level. When deploying on separate instances, use host_vars/nginx01.yml or host_vars/nginx02.yml.

NB! When web server hostnames were changed in the group_vars/add.yml file, then the file where to put the vhost configuration is host_vars/new_instance_name.yml

vhosts:
  - name: test.example.com
    state: present
  - name: foo.bar
    state: absent

Adding databases

To add databases, add the following contents to group_vars/database.yml

databases:
  - name: <database name>
    user: <database user name>
    password: "{{ <database user password should be specified in keys file> }}"
    replicate: true
    state: present
  - name: <second database>
    state: absent