2. www.rackspace.com 2
About Me
- Sri
Rajan
- From
India
- 9
years
in
Texas,
4+
in
UK
- 10+
years
in
IT,
6+
years
at
Rackspace
- SpecialAes:
Linux,
OpenStack,
AutomaAon
linkedin.com/in/rajansriram
+SriramRajan
@sriramrajan

3. 9 Worldwide
Data Centers
We Serve FORTUNE®
5,000+ Rackers
Global Footprint
Customers in
120+ Countries
Over $1B Annualized Revenue
www.rackspace.com 3
About Rackspace
60% OF THE
100
OVER
200,000+
90,000+ Servers
26,000+ VM
≅70 PB Stored
Customers
Portfolio of
Hosted Solutions
Dedicated - Cloud - Hybrid

5. Fictional
machine
capable
of
instantaneous
or
superluminal
communication
Image Credits :
http://popten.net/2009/02/etymology-101-ansible-a-hypothetical-machine-capable-of-
superluminal-communication/

6. Remote Execution

7. Configuration management

8. Multi-Tier Orchestration

9. Image credit : http://www.ampersandadvisory.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/what-makes-us-different.jpg

10. Agent-less
Simplified Model
[SSH]

12. You use YAML
Infrastructure is not code

13. More Ops Than Dev…

14. Growing Community

15. HOW DOES IT
WORK

16. Install
$ pip install ansible
That’s it!

17. Inventory
- Host listing/Grouping
- Rackapce/AWS/OpenStack
API
- Your own
- All of the above
Image Credit: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/10/17/article-2219188-158CE597000005DC-42_964x507.jpg

18. Inventory
[demoservers]
demo01 ansible_ssh_host=134.213.48.86
[web]
web1.example.com ansible_ssh_port=5555
www[01:50].example.com ansible_ssh_port=5555
[db]
db-[a-f].example.com ansible_ssh_port=5555 mysql_port=3307

19. Use
Is host alive?
$ ansible -i <inventory file> all -m ping
ss-dfw-00 | success >> {
"changed": false,
"ping": "pong"
}

20. Use
Run arbitrary commands
$ ansible -i <inventory> all -m shell –a ‘df –h’
ss-dfw-00 | success | rc=0 >>
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use%
Mounted on
rootfs 20G 1.6G 18G 9% /
udev 10M 0 10M 0% /
dev
…

21. With great power…
$ ansible -i <inventory> all -m shell –a ‘rm –rf /’

22. Tasks
- A discrete action
- Declaration of system state
- Directory should exist
- Package should be installed
- Service should be running

23. Modules
- Bits of code copied to the target to satisfy
the task declaration
- Code need not exist on remote host
- Can be implemented in any language

24. Modules
Batteries Included !!
• run commands
• transfer files
• install packages
• manage daemons
• manage users and
groups
• gather facts
• deploy software with
SCM
• manage DBs (MySQL,
PostgreSQL, MongoDB,
Redis, …)
http://docs.ansible.com/modules_by_category.html

25. Tasks & Modules
$ ansible web –m service –a “name=nginx
enabled=yes state=started”

26. Modules
$ ansible-doc -l
acl Sets and retrieves file ACL information.
airbrake_deployment Notify airbrake about app deployments
apache2_module enables/disables a module of the Apache2
webserver
apt Manages apt-packages

27. Plays & Playbooks
- Plays are ordered set of tasks
- Playbooks contain one or more plays
- Written in Yaml
- Declarative
- Execute in the order it is written

28. Playbooks
-­‐-­‐-­‐
-­‐
name:
Install
UI
for
Demo
hosts:
Define
hosts
Or
Groups
-­‐
demoservers
vars:
-­‐
DEMO_ROOT:
/demos
-­‐
UI_SCRIPT_ROOT:
"{{DEMO_ROOT}}/scripts"
Define
variables

29. Playbooks
tasks:
-­‐
name:
Install
base
packages
yum:
name={{
item
}}
state=installed
with_items:
-­‐
mod_wsgi
Install
-­‐
php
packages
-­‐
mod_php
-­‐
name:
Create
demo
directory
action:
file
path={{DEMO_ROOT}}
state=directory
recurse=yes
Create
Directories

30. Playbooks
-­‐
name:
Copy
httpd
virtual
host
template:
src=templates/demo.httpd.conf
dest=/
etc/httpd/conf.d/demo.conf
-­‐
name:
Start
httpd
and
enable
it
service:
name=httpd
state=started
enabled=yes
when:
ansible_os_family
==
"RedHat"
Copy
configuration
files.
Start
services

31. Playbooks
-­‐
name:
Start
mysql
and
enable
it
service:
name=mysqld
state=started
enabled=yes
-­‐
name:
Create
mysql
database
mysql_db:
name=demo
state=present
-­‐
name:
Import
mysql
file
mysql_db:
name=demo
state=import
target=/root/
createdb.sql
Create
databases
Import
data

32. Cloud Providers
- Support for most common providers;
Rackspace, OpenStack, GCE, AWS etc.
- Goes beyond servers (configure load
balancer, dns etc)

33. Cloud Providers
-­‐
name:
Build
environment
tasks:
-­‐
name:
Load
Balancer
create
local_action:
module:
rax_clb
credentials:
~/.raxpub
name:
demo.ansible.org
port:
80
protocol:
HTTP
region:
LON
wait:
yes
state:
present
register:
clb

34. Cloud Providers
-­‐
name:
Server
create
request
local_action:
module:
rax
name:
web%04d-­‐demo.ansible.com
flavor:
performance1-­‐1
image:
ubuntu-­‐1204-­‐lts-­‐precise-­‐pangolin
networks:
-­‐
public
-­‐
my-­‐net
region:
LON
count:
5
register:
rax

37. Windows
- Fairly new (announced this year)
- Works with winrm
- Runs from a Linux control station (python
winrm module)

39. Tower
- Extra bells and whistles
- Role based access
- Push button jobs
- Dashboard
- Auditing
- Talks to the enterprise
- Makes them pay for it J

40. Ansible in Rackspace
- Disclaimer
- Manage public cloud
- Developer support
- Automate system admin tasks (Ransack)

41. THANK YOU
linkedin.com/in/rajansriram
+SriramRajan
@sriramrajan

42. QUESTIONS
linkedin.com/in/rajansriram
+SriramRajan
@sriramrajan