Ansible Facts Gathering

Question: The Nautilus DevOps team is trying to setup a simple Apache web server on all app servers in Stratos DC using Ansible. They also want to create a sample html page for now with some app specific data on it. Below you can find more details about the task.

You will find a valid inventory file /home/thor/playbooks/inventory on jump host (which we are using as an Ansible controller).

Create a playbook index.yml under /home/thor/playbooks directory on jump host. Using blockinfile Ansible module create a file facts.txt under /root directory on all app servers and add the following given block in it. You will need to enable fact gathering for this task.

Ansible managed node IP is <default ipv4 address>

(You can obtain default ipv4 address from Ansible's gathered facts by using correct the Ansible variable taking into account Jinja2 syntax)

Install httpd server on all apps. After that make a copy of facts.txt file as index.html under /var/www/html. Make sure to start httpd service after that.

Note: Do not create a separate role for this task, just add all changes in index.yml playbook.

Please Note :-  Perform the below commands based on your question  server,  user name & other details might differ . So please read task carefully before executing. All the Best 👍

Solution:  

1. Go through the folder mentioned in task and create inventory & playbook files

     cd /home/thor/playbooks/

2. Create a playbook file as per the task  ( refer Video below for clarity )

--- -   hosts: stapp01, stapp02, stapp03   gather_facts: true   become: yes   become_method: sudo   tasks:     - name: create a  file using blockinfile       blockinfile:        create: yes        path: /root/facts.txt        block: |          Ansible managed node IP is {{ ansible_default_ipv4.address }}     - name: Install apache packages       package:        name: httpd     - name: file copy       shell: cp /root/facts.txt /var/www/html/index.html     - name: ensure httpd is running       systemd:        name: httpd        state: restarted

3. Post file saved , run below command to execute the playbook

   ansible-playbook  -i inventory index.yml

4. validate the task by curl to all app server and check

      curl http://stapp01

5. Click on Finish & Confirm to complete the task successful

Happy Learning!!!!

Apart from this if you need more clarity,  I have made a  tutorial video on this , please go through and share your comments. Like and share the knowledge