Automating AWS EC2 Instance Provisioning with Ansible

In today's rapidly evolving IT landscape, automation is key to efficiently managing infrastructure and accelerating deployment processes. Ansible, a popular configuration management tool, provides a seamless way to automate tasks across multiple systems. In this blog post, we'll explore how to leverage Ansible to automate the provisioning of Amazon EC2 instances, demonstrating step-by-step instructions along with practical examples.

Setting Up AWS CLI and Ansible Galaxy:

Before diving into Ansible playbooks, it's essential to configure AWS CLI credentials and install the necessary Ansible collection. Let's start with the setup:

[root@siddhesh ~]# aws configure
AWS Access Key ID [****************B839]:
AWS Secret Access Key [****************D9er]:
Default region name [ap-south-1]:
Default output format [None]:
[root@siddhesh ~]# ansible-galaxy collection install amazon.aws
Starting galaxy collection install process
Process install dependency map
Starting collection install process
Downloading https://galaxy.ansible.com/api/v3/plugin/ansible/content/published/collections/artifacts/amazon-aws-7.3.0.tar.gz to /root/.ansible/tmp/ansible-local-19113nwa7nrht/tmp4ybw4dao/amazon-aws-7.3.0-vz1xj43g
Installing 'amazon.aws:7.3.0' to '/root/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/amazon/aws'
amazon.aws:7.3.0 was installed successfully
[root@siddhesh ~]#

With the AWS CLI configured and the Ansible AWS collection installed, we're now ready to automate EC2 instance provisioning.

Creating an EC2 Instance with Ansible:

Ansible provides modules specifically designed for AWS resource management. Let's create a playbook to launch an EC2 instance:

[root@siddhesh ~]# cat create_ec2_instance.yml
---
- hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  tasks:
    - name: Launch EC2 instance
      amazon.aws.ec2_instance:
        name: "my-ansible-instance"
        image_id: "ami-0763cf792771fe1bd"
        count: 1
        region: ap-south-1
        instance_type: t2.micro
        tags:
          Name: "My Ansible Builddevops Instance"
[root@siddhesh ~]#

In this playbook:

We specify the target host as localhost since we're running the playbook locally.

The amazon.aws.ec2_instance module is used to provision an EC2 instance.

Key parameters such as name, image_id, count, region, instance_type, and tags are provided to configure the instance.

We define tags for the instance to organize resources efficiently.

Running the Playbook:

Now, let's execute the playbook and observe the instance creation process:

[root@siddhesh ~]# ansible-playbook create_ec2_instance.yml
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit localhost does not match 'all'
PLAY [localhost] *******************************************************************************************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] *************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [Launch EC2 instance] *********************************************************************************************************************************
changed: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP *************************************************************************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
[root@siddhesh ~]#

Let's break down the output:

[root@siddhesh ~]# - This is the command prompt, indicating that the user is logged in as the root user on a system named "siddhesh".

ansible-playbook create_ec2_instance.yml - This is the command to execute the Ansible playbook named create_ec2_instance.yml. Ansible is a tool for automation of tasks on multiple servers. Playbooks are files written in YAML format that contain a set of tasks to be executed.

[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit localhost does not match 'all' - This is a warning message from Ansible indicating that no hosts were specified to run the playbook against. As a result, Ansible is only using the local machine (localhost) to execute the tasks defined in the playbook.

PLAY [localhost] - This indicates that the playbook is targeting the localhost, i.e., the local machine.

TASK [Gathering Facts] - This is a task in the playbook to gather system facts from the target host. It's a common first task in many Ansible playbooks as it collects information about the target system.

ok: [localhost] - This indicates that the task "Gathering Facts" completed successfully on the localhost.

TASK [Launch EC2 instance] - This is another task in the playbook, presumably responsible for launching an EC2 instance.

changed: [localhost] - This indicates that the task "Launch EC2 instance" caused a change on the localhost. In this case, it likely means that the EC2 instance was successfully launched.

PLAY RECAP - This is a summary of the playbook execution.

localhost : ok=2 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 - This line breaks down the summary:

ok=2: Two tasks were executed successfully.

changed=1: One task caused a change (likely the "Launch EC2 instance" task).

unreachable=0: No hosts were unreachable.

failed=0: No tasks failed.

skipped=0: No tasks were skipped.

rescued=0: No tasks were rescued.

ignored=0: No tasks were ignored.

AWS console would look something like this :

AWS Console