Configuration Management using Ansible Presented By: Winston Mphahlele I.T Department Vaal University of Technology 28 JUN 2017

Our journey Manual server setup. Tedious process. Different environmental configurations. Time consuming Human mistakes

Configuration management Is a process that ensures correct settings and rules are assigned to specific configuration items, which consist of the following: Software. Hardware. Services. Users. Ensures that the current design and build state of the system is known, good and trusted.

No configuration management means: Figure it out. Re-doing an implementation. Losing productivity. Modifying wrong items. Figuring out which software, services to change when requirements change. Re-doing an implementation because you implemented to meet requirements that had changed and you didn’t communicate that to all parties. Losing productivity when you’re busy replacing softwares and services with a flawed new version and can’t quickly revert to a working state Modifying wrong items because you couldn’t accurately determine which packages, software, dependencies or services needed modifications.

Ansible Automation engine for: cloud provisioning. application deployment. configuration management. Is a solution for configuration management which is designed to be: Minimal in configuration. Consistent. Secure. Highly reliable. Easy to learning for administrators and developers.

Why Ansible Automation Increased efficiencies, stability and control. Define and enforce formal policies and procedures. Cost reduction. Provides rapid detection and correction of improper configurations. Faster problem resolution, thus giving better quality of service. Faster service restoration. More efficient for change management. Automation is the future in IT and improves production Increased efficiencies, stability and control Cost reduction by having detailed knowledge of all configuration settings which helps avoiding unnecessary duplications.

Playbooks The entry point for Ansible provisionings. Ansible playbooks are a way to send commands to remote computers. Written in the YAML data serialization format. The entry point for Ansible provisioning's where the automation is defined through tasks  Instead of using Ansible commands individually to remotely configure computers from the command line, you can configure entire complex environments by passing a script to one or more systems. Yamal stands for: Yaml ain't markup language serialization think of it as a way to translate a programmatic data structure (lists, arrays) into a format that can be stored to a disk. In this case Json

Playbooks

Grouping Server groups

Playbook script

Script for specific groups Installing nginx on all webservers.

Script for all servers

Good practices Group your servers Use playbooks. Name your tasks. Use whitespace and comments. Keep it simple. Version control. Be dynamic, use variables.

Ansible ROI Increased staff productivity. Increased user productivity. Reduced IT cost.  Increased staff productivity. Optimizing IT staff activities through automation reduced IT staff time spent "keeping the lights on", freeing up valuable staff resources for business-related initiatives. Increased user productivity. User downtime caused by system outages, cyber attacks, security intrusions, and change and configuration activities is reduced Reduced IT cost. Optimizing IT operations reduces costs in multiple areas, including infrastructure, outsourced services and management software.

Lessons learned Versioning. Attribute. Change-oriented Plan when new release is to be produced.

Every failure is a stepping stone to success. Thank you Every failure is a stepping stone to success.

Questions winstonm@vut.ac.za