Modernizing Infrastructure at UNEP-WCMC with Ansible and AWX
How UNEP-WCMC leveraged Ansible and AWX to bring their infrastructure up to date.
Introduction
At the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), maintaining an up-to-date and efficient IT infrastructure is crucial for supporting our mission to provide high-quality information on biodiversity and conservation. Recently, we undertook a major initiative to modernize our infrastructure using Ansible and AWX. This blog post explores how we implemented these tools to streamline our processes and improve our infrastructure management.
What is Ansible?
Ansible is an open-source automation tool that simplifies configuration management, application deployment, and task automation. By using simple, human-readable YAML files, Ansible allows IT teams to automate their workflows efficiently.
What is AWX?
AWX is an open-source web application that provides a user-friendly interface for Ansible. It allows you to manage and visualize your Ansible projects, making it easier to deploy and monitor your infrastructure automation.
Challenges Faced
Before implementing Ansible and AWX, our infrastructure management processes were largely manual and time-consuming. This led to several challenges:
- Inconsistent Configurations: Manual configurations often resulted in discrepancies across our servers.
- Time-Consuming Deployments: Deploying updates and patches took significant time and effort.
- Limited Visibility: Monitoring the state of our infrastructure was challenging without a centralized management tool.
Implementing Ansible
Step 1: Inventory Setup
We began by setting up our Ansible inventory. This inventory file listed all our servers and their respective roles within the infrastructure. An example inventory file looked like this:
all:
hosts:
server1.example.com:
server2.example.com:
children:
webservers:
hosts:
web1.example.com:
web2.example.com:
dbservers:
hosts:
db1.example.com:
db2.example.com:
Step 2: Playbook Creation
Next, we created Ansible playbooks to automate common tasks such as software installation, configuration management, and service restarts. Here’s a sample playbook for setting up a web server:
- name: Set up web server
hosts: webservers
become: yes
tasks:
- name: Install Nginx
apt:
name: nginx
state: present
- name: Start Nginx service
service:
name: nginx
state: started
Step 3: Running Playbooks
We ran our playbooks using the ansible-playbook command, which allowed us to apply configurations across multiple servers simultaneously:
ansible-playbook -i inventory.yaml setup-webserver.yaml
Integrating AWX
Installation and Setup
To provide a graphical interface for our Ansible projects, we installed AWX. AWX made it easier to manage our Ansible playbooks, view logs, and schedule jobs. We followed the official installation guide to set up AWX on a dedicated server.
Project Configuration
In AWX, we configured our projects by linking them to our version control system (VCS). This allowed us to automatically pull the latest playbooks and inventory files from our Git repository.
Job Templates
We created job templates in AWX to define the tasks we wanted to run. Each job template specified the playbook to execute, the inventory to use, and any extra variables needed for the task.
Scheduling and Monitoring
AWX provided us with scheduling capabilities, allowing us to automate the execution of playbooks at specific times. Additionally, the AWX dashboard offered real-time monitoring and logging, giving us better visibility into the state of our infrastructure.
Benefits Realized
By implementing Ansible and AWX, UNEP-WCMC achieved several benefits:
- Consistency: Automated playbooks ensured that configurations were applied consistently across all servers.
- Efficiency: Tasks that previously took hours to complete could now be done in minutes.
- Visibility: The AWX interface provided a centralized view of our infrastructure, making it easier to monitor and manage.
Conclusion
The modernization of our infrastructure using Ansible and AWX has significantly improved our operational efficiency and reliability at UNEP-WCMC. By automating repetitive tasks and providing better visibility into our systems, we can now focus more on our core mission of biodiversity and conservation monitoring.
If you’re looking to streamline your infrastructure management, I highly recommend exploring Ansible and AWX. They offer powerful tools to automate your workflows and bring your infrastructure up to date.
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