I'm trying to create an small webapp infrastructure with ansible on Amazon AWS and I want to do all the process: launch instance, configure services, etc. but I can't find a proper tool or module to deal with that from ansible. Mainly EC2 Launch.
Thanks a lot.
This is the short answer of your question, if you want detail and fully automated role, please let me know. Thanks
Prerequisite:
Ansible
Python boto library
Set up the AWS access and secret keys in the environment settings
(best is inside the ~./boto)
In order to create the EC2 Instance, please modified these parameters that you can find inside the "ec2_launch.yml" file under "vars":
count # Number of instance(s), you want to create
Once, you have mentioned these parameter, please run the following command:
ansible-playbook -i hosts ec2_launch.yml
Contents of hosts file:
[local]
localhost
[webserver]
Contents of ec2_launch.yml file:
---
- name: Provision an EC2 Instance
hosts: local
connection: local
gather_facts: False
tags: provisioning
# Necessary Variables for creating/provisioning the EC2 Instance
vars:
instance_type: t1.micro
security_group: webserver # Change the security group name here
image: ami-98aa1cf0 # Change the AMI, from which you want to launch the server
region: us-east-1 # Change the Region
keypair: ansible # Change the keypair name
count: 1
# Task that will be used to Launch/Create an EC2 Instance
tasks:
- name: Create a security group
local_action:
module: ec2_group
name: "{{ security_group }}"
description: Security Group for webserver Servers
region: "{{ region }}"
rules:
- proto: tcp
type: ssh
from_port: 22
to_port: 22
cidr_ip: 0.0.0.0/0
- proto: tcp
from_port: 80
to_port: 80
cidr_ip: 0.0.0.0/0
rules_egress:
- proto: all
type: all
cidr_ip: 0.0.0.0/0
- name: Launch the new EC2 Instance
local_action: ec2
group={{ security_group }}
instance_type={{ instance_type}}
image={{ image }}
wait=true
region={{ region }}
keypair={{ keypair }}
count={{count}}
register: ec2
- name: Add the newly created EC2 instance(s) to the local host group (located inside the directory)
local_action: lineinfile
dest="./hosts"
regexp={{ item.public_ip }}
insertafter="[webserver]" line={{ item.public_ip }}
with_items: "{{ ec2.instances }}"
- name: Wait for SSH to come up
local_action: wait_for
host={{ item.public_ip }}
port=22
state=started
with_items: "{{ ec2.instances }}"
- name: Add tag to Instance(s)
local_action: ec2_tag resource={{ item.id }} region={{ region }} state=present
with_items: "{{ ec2.instances }}"
args:
tags:
Name: webserver
As others have said, the cloud module contains just about all the AWS provisioning support you'd need. That said, Ansible's paradigm makes most sense once there's an existing SSH:able machine to target and connect to. The instantiation phase, by comparison, essentially asks you to target your local machine and calls AWS API endpoints from there.
Like you, I wanted a single-shot command with a graceful transition from EC2 instantiation into its configuration. There's suggestions on how to accomplish something like this in the documentation, but it relies on the the add_host module to tweak Ansible's idea of current host inventory, and even then I couldn't find a solution that didn't feel like i was working against rather than with the system.
In the end I opted for two distinct playbooks: a provision.yml that uses the ec2, ec2_group, ec2_vol, ec2_eip and route53 modules to ensure I have the "hardware" in place, and then configure.yml, more like a traditional Ansible site.yml, which is able to treat host inventory (static in my case, but dynamic will work well) as a given and do all that good declarative state transitioning.
Both playbooks are idempotent, but it's configure.yml that's meant to be rerun over and over in the long run.
The EC2 module was designed precisely for creating and destroying instances.
If you want the "best" way, it's hard to beat CloudFormation, which can be launched from Ansible.
