Wrap up

Final Challenge or Putting it all Together

This is the final challenge where we try to put most of what you have learned together.

Let’s set the stage

Your team responsible for web application deployments like what they see in automation controller. To use it in their environment they put together these requirements:

  • As the webservers can be used for either development purposes or in production, there has to be a way to flag them accordingly as stage dev or stage prod.

    • Currently node1.<GUID>.internal and node3.<GUID>.internal should be used as a development systems and node2.<GUID>.internal in production.

  • Of course the content of the world famous application “index.html” will be different between dev and prod stages.

    • There should be a title on the page stating the environment.

    • There should be a content field.

  • The content writer wweb should have access to a survey to change the content for dev and prod servers.

The Git Repository

All code is already in place - this is a automation controller lab after all and not about configuring Apache. Check out the Ansible Workshop Examples git repository again at https://github.com/ansible-labs-crew/playbooks_summit2021. You will find the playbook webcontent.yml, which calls the role role_webcontent.

Compared to the previous Apache installation role there is a major difference: there are now two versions of an index.html template, and a task deploying the template file which has a variable as part of the template file name.

Here are the files for you to review (path is relative to the Github repository):

  • rhel/apache/roles/role_webcontent/templates/dev_index.html.j2
<body>
<h1>This is a development webserver, have fun!</h1>
{{ dev_content }}
</body>
  • rhel/apache/roles/role_webcontent/templates/prod_index.html.j2
<body>
<h1>This is a production webserver, take care!</h1>
{{ prod_content }}
</body>
  • rhel/apache/roles/role_webcontent/tasks/main.yml

Only the part deploying the template is shown

[...]
- name: Deploy index.html from template
  template:
    src: "{{ stage }}_index.html.j2"
    dest: /var/www/html/index.html
  notify: apache-restart

Prepare Inventory

There is of course more then one way to accomplish this, but here is what you should do:

  • Make sure all three hosts are in the inventory Webserver.

  • Define a variable stage with the value dev for the Webserver inventory:

    • Add stage: dev to the Details of inventory Webserver by putting it into the Variables field beneath the three start-yaml dashes.

Make sure to add the variable to the inventory and not to a node!

  • In the same way add a variable stage: prod but this time only for node2.<GUID>.internal (go to the Hosts view of the inventory).

This way the host variable overrides the variable set at the Inventory level because it’s more specific and takes precedence.

Create the Template

  • Create a new Template named Create Web Content that

    • Targets the Webserver inventory.

    • Uses the Playbook rhel/apache/webcontent.yml from the Ansible Workshop Examples Project.

    • Defines two variables: dev_content: default dev content and prod_content: default prod content in Variables.

    • Uses Workshop Credentials and runs with privilege escalation.

  • Save and run the template.

Check the results

Execute curl to get the web content from each node in your VS Code terminal:

[lab-user@bastion ~]$ curl -s http://node1.<GUID>.internal
<body>
<h1>This is a development webserver, have fun!</h1>
default dev content
</body>
[lab-user@bastion 0 /etc/ansible]$ curl -s http://node2.<GUID>.internal
<body>
<h1>This is a production webserver, take care!</h1>
default prod content
</body>
[lab-user@bastion 0 /etc/ansible]$ curl -s http://node3.<GUID>.internal
<body>
<h1>This is a development webserver, have fun!</h1>
default dev content
</body>

Add Survey

  • Add a survey to the Template to allow changing the variables dev_content and prod_content.

  • Add permissions to the Team Web Content so the Template Create Web Content can be executed by wweb.

  • Run the survey as user wweb.

Check the results again from your VS Code terminal using curl as above.

Solution

Solution NOT below

You have to figure this one out by yourself! ;-)

You have done all the required configuration steps in the lab already. If unsure, just refer back to the respective chapters.

The End

Congratulations, you finished your labs! We hope you enjoyed your first encounter with automation controller as much as we enjoyed creating the labs.