This repo is a boilerplate for getting started for repos containing Ansible playbooks. git clone this project and be on your merry way.

• pip install ansible (may need to run this as sudo)

• git clone --depth=1 --branch=master https://github.com/mikechau/ansible-boilerplate.git - clone the latest copy of the repo
• cd ansible-boilerplate && git remote rm origin - remove the origin

.
├── ansible.cfg
├── galaxy_roles
├── inventories
│   ├── group_vars
│   └── host_vars
├── LICENSE
├── log -> /tmp/ansible.log
├── notes
├── playbooks
├── README.md
├── requirements.yml
├── roles
└── tmp

This is a project specific configuration file to configure Ansible. View to see a more detailed explanation of the default settings provided by this project.

• Ansible.cfg - http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_configuration.html

This is where you should install your third-party roles from Ansible Galaxy.

Recommended to configure requirements.yml with the third party roles you are using.

• Ansible Galaxy - http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/galaxy.html

This is where you should put the list of hosts for Ansible to connect to. It also contains directories for group_vars and host_vars.

Example:

.
├── group_vars
├── host_vars
└── production

We have a file called production, but if you have a lot of environments, instead of production, you might call it production_app_name or app_name_production, etc.

In it you might define it like so:

# inventories/production
[application]
app01.server.com
app02.server.com
app03.server.com

[database]
db01.server.com

[production:children]
application
database

production:children, indicates to Ansible this is a group of made of all the things in the groups listed below.

So its equivalent to manually writing:

# inventories/production
[production]
app01.server.com
app02.server.com
app03.server.com
db01.server.com

This directory contains yaml files which correspond to a group name, and tells Ansible to load the variables for the hosts in that group.

Example structure:

.
└── group_vars
    ├── all
    │   └── ubuntu.yml
    ├── application
    │   ├── rails.yml
    │   └── secret
    │       └── rails.yml
    └── database
        ├── mysql.yml
        ├── postgresql.yml
        └── secret
            ├── mysql.yml
            └── postgresql.yml

• all - is a Ansible group, where it will be loaded for all hosts.
• application- is a user defined group of hosts, we defined this in our production hosts file in the previous example.
• database - is a user defined group of hosts, we defined this in our production hosts file in the previous example.

A group variable file looks like this:

# inventories/group_vars/application/rails.yml
---
rails_version: 5.0.0

So the rails_version variable will be available for all hosts listed under application (app[0-3].server.com).

NOTE: You might have noticed the secret directory, this is where you can take advantage of ansible-vault. For secret specific variables such as api keys and etc, I like to put them inside a secret folder, and encrypt the folder with ansible-vault.

Secrets are prefixed with the key secret_.

Example:

# Encrypted secrets for rails
# inventories/group_vars/application/secret/rails.yml
---
secret_rails_secret_token: 1db372dbc0a8200da1d7f9c51384fe0094c940628c497e7e519eb4977aba244cdad0ab9c4965383d2dc9244296ea6b889fe711d40dc590a4455d17e1a012db58

# Unencrypted secrets for rails
# inventories/group_vars/application/rails.yml
---
rails_version: 5.0.0
rails_secret_token: "{{ secret_rails_secret_token }}"

You can see our unencrypted variable file reference the encrypted variable file's variable in secret.

host_vars work just like group_vars, but instead of naming it after a group name, you use the hostname. The variables only be loaded for that specific host.

Example:

.
└── host_vars
    └── app01.server.com
        └── rails.yml

• Inventory - http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_inventory.html
• Variables - http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_variables.html

By default this is just a symlink to tmp/ansible.log.

This is where you can add your notes for things like manual configuration.

This is where playbooks should be placed.

• Playbooks - http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks.html

Edit this yml file to add your third-party roles from Github or Ansible Galaxy.

Then install your roles with this command:

ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml

Ansible Galaxy - requirements - http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/galaxy.html#advanced-control-over-role-requirements-files

This is where you can add your custom Ansible roles for usage by your playbooks.

Roles - http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_roles.html#roles

A tmp directory for convenience. For example, you may prefer to write logs here.

MIT