Deploy AWS EC2 instances using Ansible

Estimated read time 3 min read

We have seen in the past how to use Terraform to deploy AWS EC2 instance. But, this is also possible using Ansible. In this blog post, we will focus on the deployment of AWS EC2 instance using Ansible. I assume that you have already been to the basics installation of Ansible and basic playbook creation. Here are some links on tunnelix.com on Ansible. Please consider visiting them if you have any doubt. I assume that you have already install Ansible on your machine and know the basics of Ansible Playbook creation.

Setup the AWS IAM Account

1. Start by creating an AWS user account through the AWS IAM. Go to IAM, then click on USER, then click on ADD USER:

2. Once you have click on the ADD USER, Enter a name and tick on PROGRAMMATIC ACCESS, click on NEXT: PERMISSIONS

3. On the following page, Create a group, I have created one called ‘Ansible’ then attached the user to the group. After that click on ATTACH EXISTING POLICIES DIRECTLY’, then search for AMAZONEC2FULLACCESS and tick it and click on NEXT: TAGS.

4. Click on Next, add the tags and click on ‘CREATE USER’.

5. Consider downloading the credential.csv file by clicking on Download .csv

6. Consider also creating a key pair

Some installations and configurations on the Ansible controller

7. Now, on your Linux controller, we will need some Python modules to interact with AWS. Assuming you have already installed Ansible, consider installing python-pip:

yum install python-pip

8.  Let’s now install the AWS CLI

yum install awscli

9. Sync the clock of the VM to prevent any error

hwclock -s

10. Configure your AWS CLI

aws configure

It will prompt you to enter the AWS Access Key ID, secret key, etc. Just enter the information. Example:

[root@puppet-server ~]# aws configure

AWS Access Key ID [****************GYGY]: AKIA5xxxxxxxxxx
AWS Secret Access Key [****************458q]: EvEd55xxxxxxxxxx
Default region name [us-east-1]:
Default output format [json]: 

11. Create the following file: /home/.boto

[Credentials]
aws_access_key_id = AKIAxxxxxxxxxxxxx
aws_secret_access_key = xc3xxxxxxxxxxx

12. The following command should test your AWS credentials

aws get sts-caller-identity

13. Install the boto Python module. The boto python module will talk with the AWS CLI to authenticate on aws.

pip install boto 

Creating the Playbook and Deploying the AWS EC2 Instance

14. Now, let’s create a playbook as follows in /home/AWSTask.yml

- name: EC2 Instance creation
  hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  tasks:
  - name: Launching the EC2 instance
    ec2: 
      instance_type: t2.nano
      key_name: ansible
      image: ami-0b69ea66ff7391e80
      region: us-east-1
      group: default
      count: 1
      vpc_subnet_id: subnet-ef9179a4
      wait: yes
      assign_public_ip: yes

You can also access it on my Ansible Github repository.

15. Simply launch the Playbook

ansible-playbook AWSTask.yml

16. As you can see below, the EC2 instance has been created.

Nitin J Mutkawoa https://tunnelix.com

Blogger at tunnelix.com | Founding member of cyberstorm.mu | An Aficionado Journey in Opensource & Linux – And now It's a NASDAQ touch!

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