This is a solution for the Ansible Assignment on Udemy https://www.udemy.com/learn-ansible-advanced

This assignment tests the students knowledge on deploying a distributed web application on cloud using fully automated Ansible playbooks. The solution is shared to the instructor and student community using github repository and feedback will be given.

A full video demonstration of the solution is under development. Will update once ready.

Below is my solution to the problem.

I chose Google Cloud Platform as I found it easiest to get started. I created a temporary account to get a $300 credit and utilized it as development environment.

I set up a local VM on Oracle Virtual Box as my Ansible Controller. There are some pre-requisites required on the Ansible Controller system to work with Google Cloud. Details are documented here Once the Ansible Controller was setup I proceeded to develop my project.

I decided to use tasks file for deploying VMs and create my own roles to configure those VMs with Application. ​

• Tasks: A role to deploy necessary compute instances on on Google Cloud
• Roles: ansible-role-mysql: A role to install and configure MySQL on any given systems
• Roles: ansible-role-flask-web: A role to install and configure Flask application on multiple
• Tasks: Configure native Google Load Balancing and firewalls
• Tasks: Send email notification

Group Variables to have following properties:

• project_id: ID of my GCP project

• service_account_email: ​ Service Account to connect to GCP

• credentials_file: ​​ Credentials file to connect to GCP

• num_web_instances: ​ Number of web instances to deploy

• db_name: Database name

• db_user: Database user to create

• db_password: Password for the Database user

• machine_type: Type of machine to deploy eg: n1-standard-1
  ​- image: Image of instance to deploy debian-7

• instance_list: An array containing list of servers to deploy

     - web-server-1,web-server-2
     - db-server
  

• db_name: Database name

• db_user: Database user

• db_user_password: Database user password

• ansible_user: User to connect to Compute Instances using gcloud compute ssh

• ansible_ssh_private_key_file: Private key file to connect to Compute Instances using gcloud compute ssh