..note:: This section of the documentation is under construction. We are in the process of adding more examples about all of the EC2 modules
and how they work together. There's also an ec2 example in the language_features directory of `the ansible-examples github repository <http://github.com/ansible/ansible-examples/>`_ that you may wish to consult. Once complete, there will also be new examples of ec2 in ansible-examples.
Ansible contains a number of core modules for interacting with Amazon Web Services (AWS). These also work with Eucalyptus, which is an AWS compatible private cloud solution. There are other supported cloud types, but this documentation chapter is about AWS API clouds. The purpose of this
Ansible contains a number of modules for controlling Amazon Web Services (AWS). The purpose of this
section is to explain how to put Ansible modules together (and use inventory scripts) to use Ansible in AWS context.
Requirements for the AWS modules are minimal. All of the modules require and are tested against boto 2.5 or higher. You'll need this Python module installed on the execution host. If you are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS, install boto from `EPEL <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL>`_:
..code-block:: bash
$ yum install python-boto
Requirements for the AWS modules are minimal.
You can also install it via pip if you want.
All of the modules require and are tested against recent versions of boto. You'll need this Python module installed on your control machine. Boto can be installed from your OS distribution or python's "pip install boto".
The following steps will often execute outside the host loop, so it makes sense to add localhost to inventory. Ansible
may not require this step in the future::
Whereas classically ansible will execute tasks in it's host loop against multiple remote machines, most cloud-control steps occur on your local machine with reference to the regions to control.
[local]
localhost
And in your playbook steps we'll typically be using the following pattern for provisioning steps::
In your playbook steps we'll typically be using the following pattern for provisioning steps::
- hosts: localhost
connection: local
gather_facts: False
tasks:
- ...
.._aws_authentication:
Authentication
``````````````
Authentication with the AWS-related modules is handled by either
specifying your access and secret key as ENV variables or module arguments.
For environment variables::
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID='AK123'
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY='abc123'
For storing these in a vars_file, ideally encrypted with ansible-vault::
---
ec2_access_key: "--REMOVED--"
ec2_secret_key: "--REMOVED--"
.._aws_provisioning:
Provisioning
````````````
The ec2 module provides the ability to provision instances within EC2. Typically the provisioning task will be performed against your Ansible master server in a play that operates on localhost using the ``local`` connection type. If you are doing an EC2 operation mid-stream inside a regular play operating on remote hosts, you may want to use the ``local_action`` keyword for that particular task. Read :doc:`playbooks_delegation` for more about local actions.
The ec2 module provisions and de-provisions instances within EC2.
..note::
An example of making sure there are only 5 instances tagged 'Demo' in EC2 follows.
Authentication with the AWS-related modules is handled by either
specifying your access and secret key as ENV variables or passing
them as module arguments.
In the example below, the "exact_count" of instances is set to 5. This means if there are 0 instances already existing, then
5 new instances would be created. If there were 2 instances, only 3 would be created, and if there were 8 instances, 3 instances would
be terminated.
..note::
What is being counted is specified by the "count_tag" parameter. The parameter "instance_tags" is used to apply tags to the newly created
instance.
To talk to specific endpoints, the environmental variable EC2_URL
can be set. This is useful if using a private cloud like Eucalyptus,
exporting the variable as EC2_URL=https://myhost:8773/services/Eucalyptus.
This can be set using the 'environment' keyword in Ansible if you like.
- hosts: localhost
gather_facts: False
Here is an example of provisioning a number of instances in ad-hoc mode:
tasks:
..code-block:: bash
- name: Provision a set of instances
ec2:
key_name: my_key
group: test
instance_type: t2.micro
image: "{{ ami_id }}"
wait: true
exact_count: 5
count_tag:
Name: Demo
instance_tags:
Name: Demo
register: ec2
# ansible localhost -m ec2 -a "image=ami-6e649707 instance_type=m1.large keypair=mykey group=webservers wait=yes" -c local
The data about what instances are created is being saved by the "register" keyword in the variable named "ec2".
In a play, this might look like (assuming the parameters are held as vars)::
From this, we'll use the add_host module to dynamically create a host group consisting of these new instances. This facilitates performing configuration actions on the hosts immediately in a subsequent task::
tasks:
- name: Provision a set of instances
ec2: >
keypair={{mykeypair}}
group={{security_group}}
instance_type={{instance_type}}
image={{image}}
wait=true
count={{number}}
register: ec2
By registering the return its then possible to dynamically create a host group consisting of these new instances. This facilitates performing configuration actions on the hosts immediately in a subsequent task::
The method above ties the configuration of a host with the provisioning step. This isn't always ideal and leads us onto the next section.
With the host group now created, a second play at the bottom of the the same provisioning playbook file might now have some configuration steps::
.._aws_advanced:
# demo_setup.yml
Advanced Usage
``````````````
- name: Provision a set of instances
hosts: localhost
# ... AS ABOVE ...
- hosts: ec2hosts
name: configuration play
user: ec2-user
gather_facts: true
tasks:
- name: Check NTP service
service: name=ntpd state=started
.._aws_host_inventory:
Host Inventory
++++++++++++++
Once your nodes are spun up, you'll probably want to talk to them again. The best way to handle this is to use the ec2 inventory plugin.
``````````````
Even for larger environments, you might have nodes spun up from Cloud Formations or other tooling. You don't have to use Ansible to spin up guests. Once these are created and you wish to configure them, the EC2 API can be used to return system grouping with the help of the EC2 inventory script. This script can be used to group resources by their security group or tags. Tagging is highly recommended in EC2 and can provide an easy way to sort between host groups and roles. The inventory script is documented doc:`api` section.
Once your nodes are spun up, you'll probably want to talk to them again. With a cloud setup, it's best to not maintain a static list of cloud hostnames
in text files. Rather, the best way to handle this is to use the ec2 dynamic inventory script.
You may wish to schedule a regular refresh of the inventory cache to accommodate for frequent changes in resources:
This will also dynamically select nodes that were even created outside of Ansible, and allow Ansible to manage them.
..code-block:: bash
# ./ec2.py --refresh-cache
See the doc:`aws_example` for how to use this, then flip back over to this chapter.
Put this into a crontab as appropriate to make calls from your Ansible master server to the EC2 API endpoints and gather host information. The aim is to keep the view of hosts as up-to-date as possible, so schedule accordingly. Playbook calls could then also be scheduled to act on the refreshed hosts inventory after each refresh. This approach means that machine images can remain "raw", containing no payload and OS-only. Configuration of the workload is handled entirely by Ansible.
.._aws_tags_and_groups:
Tags
++++
Tags And Groups And Variables
`````````````````````````````
There's a feature in the ec2 inventory script where hosts tagged with
certain keys and values automatically appear in certain groups.
When using the ec2 inventory script, hosts automatically appear in groups based on how they are tagged in EC2.
For instance, if a host is given the "class" tag with the value of "webserver",
it will be automatically discoverable via a dynamic group like so::
@ -128,178 +149,83 @@ it will be automatically discoverable via a dynamic group like so::
tasks:
- ping
Using this philosophy can be a great way to manage groups dynamically, without
having to maintain separate inventory.
Using this philosophy can be a great way to keep systems seperated by the function they perform.
In this example, if we wanted to define variables that are automatically applied to each machine tagged with the 'class' of 'webserver', 'group_vars'
in ansible can be used. See :doc:`splitting_out_vars`.
Similar groups are available for regions and other classifications, and can be similarly assigned variables using the same mechanism.
.._aws_pull:
Pull Configuration
++++++++++++++++++
Autoscaling with Ansible Pull
`````````````````````````````
For some the delay between refreshing host information and acting on that host information (i.e. running Ansible tasks against the hosts) may be too long. This may be the case in such scenarios where EC2 AutoScaling is being used to scale the number of instances as a result of a particular event. Such an event may require that hosts come online and are configured as soon as possible (even a 1 minute delay may be undesirable). Its possible to pre-bake machine images which contain the necessary ansible-pull script and components to pull and run a playbook via git. The machine images could be configured to run ansible-pull upon boot as part of the bootstrapping procedure.
Amazon Autoscaling features automatically increase or decrease capacity based on load. There are also Ansible ansibles shown in the cloud documentation that
can configure autoscaling policy.
Read :ref:`ansible-pull` for more information on pull-mode playbooks.
When nodes come online, it may not be sufficient to wait for the next cycle of an ansible command to come along and configure that node.
To do this, pre-bake machine images which contain the necessary ansible-pull invocation. Ansible-pull is a command line tool that fetches a playbook from a git server and runs it locally.
(Various developments around Ansible are also going to make this easier in the near future. Stay tuned!)
One of the challenges of this approach is that there needs to be a centralized way to store data about the results of pull commands in an autoscaling context.
For this reason, the autoscaling solution provided below in the next section can be a better approach.
Read :ref:`ansible-pull` for more information on pull-mode playbooks.
.._aws_autoscale:
Autoscaling with Ansible Tower
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
``````````````````````````````
:doc:`tower` also contains a very nice feature for auto-scaling use cases. In this mode, a simple curl script can call
a defined URL and the server will "dial out" to the requester and configure an instance that is spinning up. This can be a great way
to reconfigure ephemeral nodes. See the Tower documentation for more details. Click on the Tower link in the sidebar for details.
to reconfigure ephemeral nodes. See the Tower install and product documentation for more details.
A benefit of using the callback in Tower over pull mode is that job results are still centrally recorded and less information has to be shared
with remote hosts.
.._aws_use_cases:
Use Cases
`````````
This section covers some usage examples built around a specific use case.
.._aws_cloudformation_example:
Example 1
+++++++++
Example 1: I'm using CloudFormation to deploy a specific infrastructure stack. I'd like to manage configuration of the instances with Ansible.
Provision instances with your tool of choice and consider using the inventory plugin to group hosts based on particular tags or security group. Consider tagging instances you wish to managed with Ansible with a suitably unique key=value tag.
..note:: Ansible also has a cloudformation module you may wish to explore.
.._aws_autoscale_example:
Example 2
+++++++++
Example 2: I'm using AutoScaling to dynamically scale up and scale down the number of instances. This means the number of hosts is constantly fluctuating but I'm letting EC2 automatically handle the provisioning of these instances. I don't want to fully bake a machine image, I'd like to use Ansible to configure the hosts.
There are several approaches to this use case. The first is to use the inventory plugin to regularly refresh host information and then target hosts based on the latest inventory data. The second is to use ansible-pull triggered by a user-data script (specified in the launch configuration) which would then mean that each instance would fetch Ansible and the latest playbook from a git repository and run locally to configure itself. You could also use the Tower callback feature.
.._aws_builds:
Example 3
+++++++++
Example 3: I don't want to use Ansible to manage my instances but I'd like to consider using Ansible to build my fully-baked machine images.
Ansible With (And Versus) CloudFormation
````````````````````````````````````````
There's nothing to stop you doing this. If you like working with Ansible's playbook format then writing a playbook to create an image; create an image file with dd, give it a filesystem and then install packages and finally chroot into it for further configuration. Ansible has the 'chroot' plugin for this purpose, just add the following to your inventory file::
CloudFormation is a Amazon technology for defining a cloud stack as a JSON document.
/chroot/path ansible_connection=chroot
Ansible modules provide an easier to use interface than CloudFormation in many examples, without defining a complex JSON document.
This is recommended for most users.
And in your playbook::
However, for users that have decided to use CloudFormation, there is an Ansible module that can be used to apply a CloudFormation template
to Amazon.
hosts: /chroot/path
When using Ansible with CloudFormation, typically Ansible will be used with a tool like Packer to build images, and CloudFormation will launch
those images, or ansible will be invoked through user data once the image comes online, or a combination of the two.
Example 4
+++++++++
Please see the examples in the Ansible CloudFormation module for more details.
How would I create a new ec2 instance, provision it and then destroy it all in the same play?
..code-block:: yaml
# Use the ec2 module to create a new host and then add
Michael DeHaan
10 years ago