Ansible Ec2 Creation with Dynamic Inventory

Here is a project for creating an ec2 instance with ansible using dynamic inventory. In our case, static inventory will not work because the public/private IP of an EC2 instance will only know during the provisioning time. Using the dynamic inventory we are created 2nd play on the same playbook. It will deploy a simple HTML website.

Overview

In this demo, we will be provisioning the following :

• Provision an SSH keypair, security groups, and EC2 instance through Ansible.
• Retrieve the IP Address of instance during Ec2 creating and creating dynamic inventory.
• Configuring the webserver through Ansible using dynamic inventory.

Prerequisite

• Access key and secret key for AWS IAM user with administrator access.
• Install Ansible on your machine (ansible master).
• Install python module boto, boto3 and botocore on ansible master server.

Thses module help ansible to do Python API for AWS infrastructure services to perfom its task.

pip2 install boto boto3 botocore

---

Variables Used

01-01-access-key.vars

    access_key: "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
    secret_key: "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

01-02-ec2.vars

    keypair_name: "ansible-remote-key"
    region: "us-east-2"
    sg1: "ansible-remote"                                 # security group name for ssh access
    sg2: "ansible-webserver"                              # security group name for webserver access
    ami_id: ami-002068ed284fb165b

01-03-webserver.vars

    httpd_port: 80                                        # apche port number for new virtual host entry
    httpd_user: "apache"                                  # apache user for changing file permission of document root and website files.
    httpd_group: "apache"                                 # apache group for changing file permission of document root and website files.
    domain_name: "www.abc.com"                            # servername entry for virtual host entry.

---

Provisioning Steps:

Creating SSH Keypair to access newly creating EC2 instance and it will save our local.

    - name: "AWS - Creating Ssh KeyPair"
      ec2_key:
        aws_access_key: "{{ access_key }}"
        aws_secret_key: "{{ secret_key }}"
        region: "{{ region }}"
        name: "{{ keypair_name }}"
        state: present
      register: keypair_content
    
    - name: "AWS - Saving Private Key Content"
      when: keypair_content.changed == true
      copy:
        content: "{{ keypair_content.key.private_key }}"
        dest: "{{ keypair_name }}.pem"
        mode: 0400

Security group for remote ssh(allow 22 port) access and website (allow 80, 443 port)

    - name: "AWS - Creating Security Group {{ sg1 }}"
      ec2_group:
        aws_access_key: "{{ access_key }}"
        aws_secret_key: "{{ secret_key }}"
        region: "{{ region }}"
        name: "{{ sg1 }}"
        description: "Allows Only 22 Conntenction"
        rules:
          - proto: tcp
            from_port: 22
            to_port: 22
            cidr_ip:
              - 0.0.0.0/0
            cidr_ipv6:
              - ::/0
        tags:
            Name: "{{ sg1 }}"
      register: sg1_status
                  
                  
    - name: "AWS - Creating Security Group {{ sg2 }}"
      ec2_group:
        aws_access_key: "{{ access_key }}"
        aws_secret_key: "{{ secret_key }}"
        region: "{{ region }}"
        name: "{{ sg2 }}"
        description: "Allows Only 80,443 Conntenction"
        rules:
          - proto: tcp
            from_port: 80
            to_port: 80
            cidr_ip:
              - 0.0.0.0/0
            cidr_ipv6:
              - ::/0
                  
          - proto: tcp
            from_port: 443
            to_port: 443
            cidr_ip:
              - 0.0.0.0/0
            cidr_ipv6:
              - ::/0
        tags:
          Name: "{{ sg2 }}"
      register: sg2_status

    - debug:
        msg: "{{ sg1_status.group_id }} - {{ sg2_status.group_id }}"

Spinning up new EC2 instance

    - name: "AWS - Creating Ec2 Instance"
      ec2:
        aws_access_key: "{{ access_key }}"
        aws_secret_key: "{{ secret_key }}"
        region: "{{ region }}"
        key_name: "{{ keypair_name }}"
        instance_type: "t2.micro"
        image: "{{ ami_id }}"
        wait: yes
        group_id:
          - "{{ sg1_status.group_id }}"
          - "{{ sg2_status.group_id }}"
        instance_tags:
            Name: "webserver"
        count_tag:
          Name: "webserver"
        wait_timeout: 500
        exact_count: 1
      register: ec2_status

Creating dynamic inventory from the created EC2 instance.

    - name: "Creating Dynamic Inventory"
      add_host:
        name: "{{ item.public_ip }}"
        groups: "webserver"
        ansible_host: "{{ item.public_ip }}"
        ansible_port: 22
        ansible_user: "ec2-user"
        ansible_ssh_private_key_file: "{{ keypair_name }}.pem"
        ansible_ssh_common_args: "-o StrictHostKeyChecking=no"
      with_items:
        - "{{ ec2_status.tagged_instances }}"

Here provisioning the website files

- name: "Hosting HTML Website"
  become: true
  hosts: webserver
  vars:
    httpd_port: 80
    httpd_user: "apache"
    httpd_group: "apache"
    domain_name: "www.abc.com"
  tasks:

    - name: "Installing Apache"
      yum:
        name:
          - httpd
        state: present
          
    - name: "Creating Virtualhost"
      template:
        src: "virtualhost.conf.j2"
        dest: "/etc/httpd/conf.d/{{ domain_name }}.conf"
        owner: "root"
        group: "root"
      register: vhost_status
      
    - name: "Creating Documentroot"
      file:
        path: "/var/www/html/{{ domain_name }}"
        state: directory
        owner: "{{  httpd_user }}"
        group: "{{ httpd_group }}"
          
    - name: "downoad websiute files"
      unarchive:
        src: https://www.tooplate.com/zip-templates/2121_wave_cafe.zip
        dest: /tmp/
        remote_src: true

    - name: "copy file to doc root"
      when: ansible_os_family == "RedHat"
      copy:
        src: /tmp/2121_wave_cafe/
        dest: /var/www/html/{{ domain_name }}/
        owner: "{{ httpd_user }}"
        group: "{{ httpd_group }}"
        remote_src: true
      register: copy_status
    - name: "Restarting/enabling apache"
      when: copy_status.changed == true or vhost_status.changed == true
      service:
        name: httpd
        state: restarted
        enabled: true

Usage

Clone the repository using the below command

git clone https://github.com/Jisjo/ansible_Ec2-creation_with_dynamic-inventory.git

Then, make the required changes in above mentioned files for variables and Finally, you can run the ansible playbook using the command

ansible-playbook 01-ec2_setup_main.yml 

Result

Now our web server has been configured and we can visit our website using the public IP or domain name.