How I Learned and Used Ansible for Automation

Table of contents

Keeping multiple servers up to date and properly maintained can be a challenging task. To make this process more efficient, I explored Ansible to automate system updates and maintenance tasks across multiple servers. This blog post details my learning process, the setup I used, and a practical playbook to manage updates seamlessly.

I used a Proxmox server as the host, where I created an Ansible control node. From this control node, I configured multiple managed nodes that would receive commands remotely. Here’s how I structured my setup:

1. Accessing the Ansible Control Node
   • I SSH’d into the Ansible controller from my workstation.
2. Setting Up SSH Key-Based Authentication
   • Instead of repeatedly entering passwords, I added my SSH fingerprint to each managed node’s ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.
3. Creating a Dedicated Ansible User
   • On each node, I created a separate sudo-enabled user called ansible, ensuring it had the necessary permissions to execute administrative tasks.

To define the hosts, I created an inventory file (inventory.ini), where I grouped all the target machines under [galaxy]:

inventory.ini

[galaxy]
192.168.254.175
192.168.254.176
192.168.254.183
192.168.254.179
192.168.254.107

This inventory file allowed me to run commands across all listed nodes efficiently.

Before running the playbook, I first verified the connection to all nodes using the following command:

ansible -i inventory.ini galaxy -m ping --ask-pass

This ensures that all nodes are reachable and properly configured before proceeding with automation tasks.

Once my environment was set up, I wrote a simple Ansible playbook (galaxy-update.yml) to update and upgrade system packages across all hosts. This playbook ensures that:

• The package list is updated.
• All packages are upgraded to the latest versions.
• Unnecessary packages are removed.
• Cached packages are cleaned up.

Here’s the playbook:

galaxy-update.yml

- name: Update and upgrade system packages
  hosts: all  # Target all nodes in the inventory
  become: yes  # Run tasks with sudo privileges
  tasks:
    - name: Update package lists
      apt:
        update_cache: yes

    - name: Upgrade all packages
      apt:
        upgrade: dist  # Equivalent to 'apt upgrade -y'
        autoremove: yes  # Remove unnecessary packages
        autoclean: yes  # Clean up cached packages

To execute this playbook, I simply ran the following command:

ansible-playbook galaxy-update.yml -i inventory.ini --ask-become-pass

Ansible then logged into each node, executed the update commands, and provided real-time feedback.

Tip

Ansible’s Agentless Nature: Unlike Puppet or Chef, Ansible doesn’t require an agent on remote machines, making setup much easier.

Tip

Simplified Automation: A single playbook can handle updates across multiple servers effortlessly.

Tip

Security Best Practices: Using a dedicated ansible user with limited sudo privileges improves security.

Tip

Efficiency: Running updates manually on multiple nodes can be tedious; Ansible streamlines this process significantly.

Learning Ansible has been a game-changer in how I manage multiple servers. By leveraging simple YAML playbooks, I can automate repetitive administrative tasks efficiently. If you’re looking to automate system maintenance, Ansible is a powerful and beginner-friendly tool worth exploring.