DevOps Week 6 and 7: Chart Plan and Execution

In the past two weeks, I’ve focused on diving deeper into Ansible, automating tasks, and improving my understanding of various key concepts and tools. Here’s a simple breakdown of what I’ve learned and implemented during this time:

1. Exploring Ansible => Understanding What It Is and How It Works
   Ansible is an automation tool that helps in managing and provisioning infrastructure. It uses simple YAML files, called playbooks, to define tasks and automate the deployment and configuration of systems.
   I learned about its declarative approach, where you specify the desired state of your system and Ansible ensures that it reaches that state without worrying about the intermediate steps.

2. Learning Password-less Authentication and Its Importance =>
   Password-less authentication allows you to log into servers or instances without entering a password. This improves security and simplifies automation tasks since you don’t need to manually input credentials.
   The importance of password-less authentication lies in the fact that it minimizes the risk of human error, enhances security, and is essential when automating tasks like provisioning and managing servers through Ansible.

3. Exploring Ansible Galaxy and Docs => Ansible Galaxy is a community-driven hub where you can find reusable Ansible roles, collections, and modules. I explored it to understand how I can use pre-built solutions in my own projects.
   The Ansible documentation was an invaluable resource throughout my learning process, providing detailed guides and modules to help me with tasks such as provisioning EC2 instances and automating configurations.

4. Learning Ansible Playbook Structure => I learned how to write Ansible playbooks, which are simple YAML files that define tasks and configurations for multiple servers or systems.
   A playbook typically includes the following:
   Hosts: Specifies the target servers.
   Tasks: Defines the actions to perform on the target hosts.
   Handlers: Actions that are triggered based on conditions.
   Variables: For managing dynamic data.
   Understanding this structure helped me build and execute various playbooks for automating tasks.

5. Creating Playbooks => I created several Ansible playbooks to automate various tasks, including provisioning EC2 instances, setting up password-less authentication, and automating specific tasks on instances. This hands-on practice helped reinforce my understanding of how to use Ansible effectively.

6. Project Tasks => I worked on a project where I automated the provisioning and configuration of EC2 instances with the following tasks:

Task 1: Create Three EC2 Instances (2 Ubuntu, 1 AWS Linux) Using Loops

I used Ansible's EC2 module and loops to provision two Ubuntu instances and one AWS Linux instance. The loop allowed me to simplify the process of creating multiple instances with similar configurations.
Task 2: Set Up Password-less Authentication on All Instances

I automated the process of setting up password-less authentication (using SSH keys) for all the instances. This was essential for allowing the Ansible playbooks to run without requiring passwords.
Task 3: Automate Shutdown on Ubuntu Instances Using Condition (When Condition)

I created a playbook to automatically shut down only the Ubuntu instances, using the when condition to target just those instances.

1. Reading About Vault and Inventory.ini File => I read about Vault, which is used to securely store sensitive data like passwords or private keys in Ansible.
   I also explored the inventory.ini file, which is used to define groups of servers and their configurations. It’s an essential component of managing multiple hosts in Ansible playbooks.

2. GitHub Project Link => I’ve shared my project on GitHub, where you can find the playbooks and the configurations I used: GitHub Project - Provisioning and Configuration Management

3. Resources Used

Ansible Documentation: I referred to the official Ansible documentation to understand modules like ec2 and other relevant tools: Ansible EC2 Module Documentation

Ansible Galaxy: I explored various roles and modules on Ansible Galaxy to improve my automation tasks: Ansible Galaxy - AWS Roles

YouTube Playlist: I used this YouTube playlist to follow along and learn from video tutorials:

Conclusion
The past two weeks have been incredibly productive as I explored Ansible in-depth, understood its core concepts, and implemented them in real-world tasks. I’m excited to continue building my skills with Ansible and applying them to more complex projects. This experience has given me a solid foundation for automating infrastructure and configurations, which is a key aspect of DevOps.

Feel free to explore my GitHub project and resources I used during this learning process. I’ll continue to update my journey as I progress further!