Day-5-Ansible

TLDR: In this tutorial, we explore Ansible Galaxy, a marketplace for Ansible roles, and learn how to use existing roles to simplify configuration management tasks. We also cover how to publish your own roles to Ansible Galaxy, enhancing collaboration and efficiency in DevOps practices.

Today marks episode five of our 14-episode Ansible Zero to Hero series. In this episode, we will dive deep into Ansible Galaxy, focusing on how to use existing roles to streamline our configuration management tasks.

Recap of Previous Episodes

Before we jump into today's topic, let's quickly recap what we've learned in the first four episodes:

1. Episode 1: Introduction to Ansible
   We covered the basics of Ansible, including its advantages over shell scripting and Python scripting, as well as the installation and configuration process.

2. Episode 2: Ansible Fundamentals
   We explored passwordless authentication, Ansible inventory, and ad hoc commands, practicing with various ad hoc commands.

3. Episode 3: Ansible Playbooks
   We learned about YAML files, their structure, and how to write our first Ansible Playbook to install a web server on an EC2 instance.

4. Episode 4: Introduction to Ansible Roles
   We discussed the concept of Ansible roles, their advantages, and created our first role, enhancing modularity and readability in our code.

Today's Topic: Ansible Galaxy Deep Dive

In this episode, we will focus on Ansible Galaxy, a marketplace for Ansible roles. We will learn how to:

• Use existing Ansible roles from Ansible Galaxy

• Import and install these roles

• Publish our own Ansible roles to Ansible Galaxy

Understanding Ansible Galaxy

Ansible Galaxy can be understood as a marketplace where thousands of Ansible roles are available. These roles are created by various DevOps engineers and system administrators, allowing users to leverage existing solutions instead of writing code from scratch.

For example, if tasked with installing and configuring Docker across multiple managed nodes with different operating systems (e.g., Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, Alpine, Windows), the complexity of the Ansible Playbook increases significantly. Instead of writing a complex playbook, you can search Ansible Galaxy for a pre-existing Docker role that meets your requirements.

Searching for Roles

To find a suitable role, you can visit the Ansible Galaxy website and search for Docker. You might find a role that supports multiple distributions, which can save you a lot of time and effort. Each role typically comes with documentation and a link to its GitHub repository, allowing you to review the code quality and trustworthiness of the author.

Using Ansible Galaxy CLI

To interact with Ansible Galaxy, you can use the Ansible Galaxy CLI, which is usually installed alongside Ansible. You can perform various actions such as initializing roles, removing roles, and installing roles. For example, to install a Docker role, you would use the command:

anible-galaxy role install <role_name>

Installing and Using a Role

Once you have installed a role, you can reference it in your playbook. For instance, to install Docker using the Docker role, you would create a playbook that looks like this:

---
- hosts: all
  become: true
  roles:
    - <docker_role_name>

You can then run this playbook, and it will execute all the tasks defined in the Docker role, significantly reducing the amount of code you need to write.

Publishing Your Own Roles

As a DevOps engineer, you may also want to publish your own roles to Ansible Galaxy. To do this, you need to:

1. Create a GitHub repository for your role.

2. Push your role's source code to this repository.

3. Import the repository into Ansible Galaxy using the command:

anible-galaxy import <github_username>/<repository_name>

Before importing, ensure you have an API token from Ansible Galaxy for authentication. Once published, your role will be available for others to use, fostering collaboration within your organization and the broader community.

Conclusion

In this episode, we explored how to effectively use Ansible Galaxy to leverage existing roles, simplifying our configuration management tasks. We also covered the process of publishing our own roles, enhancing our ability to share solutions with others.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Stay tuned for the next episodes, where we will delve into even more exciting topics in our Ansible Zero to Hero series. Thank you for watching, and see you next time!