Ansible 1 of 9: Environment Setup

Background

This article will create a base environment for using Ansible in future articles in this series.

1 of 9. Open Cloud9

2 of 9. Create key pair

Create key pair named 'tcb-ansible-key', saved to /home/ec2-user/environment. Make sure to set permissions on the key pair.

pwd aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name tcb-ansible-key --query 'KeyMaterial' --output text > tcb-ansible-key.pem ls -l *.pem chmod 400 tcb-ansible-key.pem ls -l *.pem

3 of 9. Create security group

Create a security group named 'launch-wizard-1" that allows SSH and ping

aws ec2 create-security-group --group-name launch-wizard-1 --description "Security group for Ansible labs" aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-id sg-0cac6f47065813337 --ip-permissions IpProtocol=tcp,FromPort=22,ToPort=22,IpRanges="[{CidrIp=0.0.0.0/0}]" IpProtocol=icmp,FromPort=8,ToPort=0,IpRanges="[{CidrIp=0.0.0.0/0}]"

4 of 9. Create a Debian host and a RedHat host

These hosts wil use the key and security-group you created in previous steps.
Create a Debian host named "host01" ami-058bd2d568351da34
Create a Red Hat host named "host02" ami-023c11a32b0207432
Make sure to use the t2.micro type instance, for the free-tier perk.
Note: AMI are region-specific. "us-east-1" was used for this example.
Note: The OS impacts the default username: admin (Debian) and ec2-user (RedHat)

aws ec2 run-instances \ --image-id ami-058bd2d568351da34 \ --count 1 \ --instance-type t2.micro \ --key-name tcb-ansible-key \ --security-group-ids sg-0cac6f47065813337 aws ec2 run-instances \ --image-id ami-023c11a32b0207432 \ --count 1 \ --instance-type t2.micro \ --key-name tcb-ansible-key \ --security-group-ids sg-0cac6f47065813337

5 of 9. Tag the created instances with names

You can find the instance IDs in the run-instances output [example above in prior step]. Alternatively, you can run the find the instanceIDs in your GUI.

aws ec2 create-tags --resources i-049525becc527c1b8 --tags Key=Name,Value=host01 aws ec2 create-tags --resources i-021c0c8d1c9d4697b --tags Key=Name,Value=host02 aws ec2 describe-tags \ --filters "Name=resource-id,Values=i-049525becc527c1b8" aws ec2 describe-tags \ --filters "Name=resource-id,Values=i-021c0c8d1c9d4697b"

Here is an example of how you could leverage "describe-instances" to filter your list of instances.

aws ec2 describe-instances \ --filters Name=key-name,Values=tcb-ansible-key \ --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].{Instance:InstanceId,AZ:Placement.AvailabilityZone,Name:Tags[?Key==`Name`]|[0].Value}' \ --output table

6 of 9. Check Python, PIP, and ansible version on Cloud9

Python, Pip, and Ansible are required for future labs in this series.

python3 --version pip3 --version ansible --version

7 of 9. If necessary, update the Cloud9 OS and install any missing components.

sudo yum update -y sudo yum install python sudo yum install pip python3 -m pip install --user ansible ansible --version

8 of 9. Validate Cloud9 can ping host01 and host02

Examples here use the private IP of host01 and host02

ping 172.31.89.75 -c3 ping 172.31.18.118 -c3

9 of 9. Validate Cloud9 can SSH to host01 and host02

Examples here use the private IP of host01 and host02

ssh -i tcb-ansible-key.pem admin@172.31.89.75 ssh -i tcb-ansible-key.pem ec2-user@172.31.18.118

References

Getting Started

Rules for ping/icmp

Rules to connect to instances from an instance with the same security group

Create, configure, and delete security groups for Amazon EC2

Create, display, and delete Amazon EC2 key pairs

Launch, list, and terminate Amazon EC2 instances

Linux file permissions explained

Managing users on your Linux instance