Working with the Ubuntu 18.04 default image as of 2019 it’s very easy to spin up an instance and deploy/manage stuff on it with Ansible.

I will list some common snippets I use, to quickly have a running EC2 instance with python3, virtualenv, flask and more.

Ansible setup

Contents of .hosts file:

[servers]
# Add hosts here
server_host_or_ip_1
server_host_or_ip_2

[servers:vars]
# Local variables for Ansible playbooks
ansible_ssh_user=ubuntu

Contents of deploy.yml file:

- hosts: servers
  become: yes
  become_method: sudo
  tasks:
  - name: update cache
    apt: name=software-properties-common state=present update_cache=yes cache_valid_time=43200
  - name: install packages
    apt: name={{item}} state=installed
    with_items:
      - mc           # Optional
      - vim          # Optional
      - tree         # Optional
      - python-pip   # Optional
      - python-dev   # Optional
      - python3-pip
      - python3-dev
      - python3-venv

- hosts: webservers
  tasks:
  - name: Configure vim for application user
    template:
      src: ".vimrc"
      dest: "/home/{{ansible_ssh_user}}/.vimrc"

- hosts: webservers
  tasks:
  - name: Configure vim for root user
    become: yes
    become_method: sudo
    template:
      src: ".vimrc"
      dest: "/root/.vimrc"

As noted, the python2, mv and vim stuff it optional, this is just my personal preference on any given linux host.

Amazon setup

Now start an EC2 instance and use the .pem file to get access. Copy your own id_rsa.pub to the ubuntu user at the EC2 instance, so you can login without a password and you are ready to use Ansible, including the possibility to become root when needed.

Add the IP or host name to your .hosts file and run.

Running the playbook

Create a virtualenv and:

pip install ansible
ansible-playbook deploy.yml

Troubleshooting

Test connection with the host. If needed, configure the ssh agent.

ansible servers -m ping

Rerun the playbook with verbosity.

ansible-playbook deploy.yml -vvvv

More to come in other posts.