Ansible Tutorials

When automating your data center infrastructure, it is important to understand the various technologies that are available to you, as well as how the individual technologies can be used in combination to better suit the individual needs of your operation. For example, both Ansible and Docker exist as solutions for the automation of server software Read More >

One of the ways Ansible executes specific tasks is through the use of modules. Modules are discrete units of code that can be used in an Ansible playbook or directly from a command-line interface. By leveraging Ansible modules you can easily manage and maintain your Ansible deployments. In this article, we will outline how Ansible Read More >

When trying to determine what software solution best suits your needs, it can be difficult to sort through all of the available options. Oftentimes the differences between two given software solutions are not immediately apparent. In this article, we will outline the differences between two popular open-source software management solutions, Ansible and Terraform. While both Read More >

While writing Ansible playbooks allows you to pre-plan automated software deployments and other tasks, you may find yourself in need of simpler commands that allow you to do less complex tasks such as powering down servers or managing users. For these tasks, you may want to use ad-hoc commands. In this article, we will outline Read More >

A low-cost High-Availability Cloud Server is one of the best ways to host websites and other web apps. However, deploying the software can be time-consuming depending on your experience level. Luckily, with our included Ansible Control Node and WordPress UltraStack Ansible Playbook, you can deploy a WordPress site with all necessary dependencies easily. In this Read More >

As we start to expand on our Ansible Catalog, we are excited to provide our Ansible Playbook for deploying WordPress to the Open Source community! We have taken great care in developing our curated WordPress-UltraStack-Ansible playbook to allow system administrators, web developers, and content designers to easily deploy WordPress. To simplify the process of getting Read More >

In this article, we will outline the process of using Git to handle versioning a repository and keeping a copy on a GitWeb provider as a backup, or for sharing. This article assumes that you have already received a copy of the WordPress UltraStack playbook, and want to retain custom changes to the playbook by Read More >

“Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.” https://git-scm.com/ Choosing a workflow Part of what has made Git so common is that it is able to support a nearly limitless amount of workflows. From the extreme organizational complexity Read More >

Rather than create our roles from scratch, we’ll use community submitted roles from Ansible Galaxy for use in our playbook. You can think of Ansible Galaxy as a community repository for Ansible Roles. As any person or team is able to contribute, it is important to use curated playbooks that are well-tested. This ensures that Read More >

The InMotion WordPress UltraStack is a curated set of services and configurations developed to provide what we believe is the best way to run a WordPress stack. We took the standard LAMP stack and extended it to also leverage Nginx as a caching layer and then used Redis to serve as an object cache. Previously, Read More >

Do you find yourself configuring many servers or hosting plans with similar sets of software packages, configuration files, and deploying full software stacks? Although Ansible is the most widely used automation engine, there are a number of configuration and orchestration solutions available. Read through this article to learn about getting started with Ansible. What is Read More >

Our Ansible Control Node allows you to start managing remote systems. The container is set up with Git, popular playbooks, an is easy to configure in the Account Management Panel (AMP). This allows you to spend less time working on your Ansible agent and more time managing remote nodes. Features include: All needed Python and Read More >

Installing Ansible is the first step to automating tasks to save time. Below we cover how to get started with Ansible depending on your operating system (OS): Local Installation Methods PIP (Python Installs Packages) Native Package Manager Verify Your Installation Ansible Installation Methods Before you begin, open your terminal (or SSH for server installation), ensure Read More >

Using Ansible doesn’t require you create everything from scratch. Ansible Galaxy encourages users to share pre-configured Ansible roles and collections for popular tasks and applications you can implement within playbooks immediately. These community submitted roles can save time when configuring playbooks for deployment. Remember, when browsing roles on Ansible Galaxy, it’s important to check stats Read More >

Ansible offers the ability to set default settings for how modules and playbooks interact with remote nodes in your inventory. There is a huge list of settings you can add within your Ansible configuration file. Below we cover how to locate your Ansible configuration file and included settings. Managing your Ansible agent on CentOS, Ubuntu, Read More >

Now that we know more about how Ansible works behind the scenes, let’s create our first Ansible Playbook! The examples in this section were performed on a Linux Distribution, though the steps should be nearly the same on most Operating Systems. The first step in creating your first Ansible Playbook is to create a working Read More >

Every server you manage with Ansible needs to be added to your Inventory.yml file. Your Ansible inventory organizes these remote hosts into groups for easier configuration within your playbooks. Below we cover how to add hosts to your Ansible inventory, sample groups, and testing an inventory connection. Manage your Ansible inventory with our reliable Cloud Read More >

Having up-to-date backups is an important part of any Ansible security posture (on Cloud VPS Hosting or otherwise). If your Ansible control machine (server or local machine) suffers a cyber attack, sometimes the best option is to restore an Ansible backup file. There are multiple ways to manage Ansible playbook backups: Git or other Version Read More >

Do you configure multiple servers with similar software configuration stacks? Imagine the time you’d save if you automated those redundant tasks. Ansible can help you find out. With Ansible automation software you can define to-do task lists to deploy and manage remote servers from a central workstation or web server. Describing Ansible Requirements for Ansible Read More >