HOW TO INSTALL ANSIBLE ON AN AWS EC2 INSTANCE

Today in our first part of a series of posts we will take a closer look on how to install and configure ANSIBLE. ANSIBLE is a configuration management and orchestration tool. It works as an IT automation engine. ANSIBLE will be installed on a Control Node. A Control Node is the node or server that will control the other nodes or clients directly from the command line without setting up any configuration files. You will only need to install ANSIBLE on the Control Node. The Control Node performs the required tasks. No other installation besides on the Control Node is required. This is in direct contrast to other orchestration tools that are available on the market which require you install their software both on the Control Node and Client nodes. ANSIBLE communicates through SSH. ANSIBLE uses configuration files called playbooks for a series of tasks. The playbooks are written in YAML . YAML stands for “YAML Ain’t Markup Language”

Step 1:

Launch A Red Hat Linux 7 AMI Such As The One Pictured Below In To An Existing VPC Or New VPC.

Step 2:

Choose An Instance Type.

Step 3:

Configure Your Instance Details Such As:

A.) VPC

B.) Subnet

Step 4:

Add Storage

Step 5:

Add Tags

Step 6:

Configure Security Group

Step 7:

Review The Instance Launch To Make Sure All The Settings Are Correct

Step 8:

Select An Existing Key Pair Or Create A New Key Pair

Step 9:

Initiating Instance Launch

Step 10:

The Instance Is Now Launching

Step 11:

Connect To Your Instance

Step 12:

After Logging Into The EC2 Instance Use The sudo -i Command To Change Permissions:

$ sudo -i

Step 13:

Update The EC2 Instance

Use The yum update -y Command

# yum update -y

Step 14:

Since This a Brand New EC2 Instance You Will Most Probably Not Have The Correct Repository In Order To Install Ansible

The (EPEL) - Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Repository Will install All The Needed Dependencies In Order To Enable You To Install Ansible

Use The Command 'yum repolist' To View The Installed Repositories:

# yum repolist

After Running The Command You Should See Something Similar To The Output Below. Notice How There Is No REPEL Repository Listed

Step 15:

In Order To Install The REPEL Repository Run The Command Below:

# yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

After Running The Command You Should See Something Similar To The Output Below. Notice How Now There Is A REPEL Repository Listed

Step 16:

Install Ansible

Use The Command 'sudo yum install ansible' To Install Ansible

# sudo yum install ansible

To Check To See If Ansible Was Installed Run The Command:

# which ansible

To See What Version Of Ansible Is Installed Run The Command:

# ansible --version

Look for an upcoming post where we will take a look at configuring ANSIBLE for SSH Passwordless login.