jonezy35/ansible-homelab

Simplifying Homelab Management: Automate with Ansible

This repo serves to work with my blog post on using Ansible to automate your homelab. Instructions to use are as follows and the blog post is below

NOTE: This was built against an ubuntu install. RHEL9 doesn't officially support docker so the docker install playbook currently doesn't work on RHEL machines

Pre Requisites

• You must have the target machines setup and have ssh key based authentication setup. If you don't have that completed yet you can follow along with the blog post below.

• You must have ansible installed on your local machine. You do not need Ansible installed on the target hosts.

To Use These Playbooks

Simply clone this repository and follow the blog post below to get started

File structure:

├── ansible.cfg
├── inventory.yml
└── playbooks
    ├── docker_status.yml
    ├── docker_update_containers.yml
    ├── first_container.yml
    ├── fresh_install.yml
    ├── install_docker.yml
    ├── install_vim.yml
    ├── os_family_discovery.yml
    ├── ping_test.yml
    └── update_upgrade.yml

ansible.cfg

This is the ansible configuration file. It tells ansible basic information about where to find certain files and how to run

inventory.yml

This file contains the inventory for all of our hosts and information about those hosts. We will go into detail later.

playbooks

This directory contains all of our plalybooks, which we will touch on later in the blog post when we get to them.

Introduction

Welcome back to our Homelab posts! Today, we're venturing into the realm of automation with Ansible. Ansible is an open-source automation tool that makes it easier to configure and manage computers and servers. It uses a simple, human-readable language to automate the setup and management of your systems, eliminating repetitive tasks and ensuring consistency across your environment. Whether you're managing a few machines or a large-scale network, Ansible's versatility allows for efficient scaling and control, making it an indispensable tool in any homelab setup.

In this post, we dive into Ansible to simplify and streamline your homelab operations. We'll begin by discussing the basics of setting up SSH key-based authentication and creating an Ansible inventory file. From there, we'll progress through various playbooks, covering everything from OS family discovery to Docker container management. By automating these essential tasks, your homelab will become more efficient, secure, and easier to maintain.

To get started, clone the github repo that goes along with this post:

git clone https://github.com/jonezy35/ansible-homelab.git

cd ansible-homelab

Section 1: Setting Up SSH Key-Based Authentication

Before jumping into Ansible playbooks, it's crucial to establish a secure and efficient way to connect to your remote machines. SSH key-based authentication offers a more secure alternative to traditional password-based methods. I've detailed the setup process in a previous post, which you can find here. This setup is essential for seamless Ansible operations.

Section 2: Crafting Your Ansible Inventory File

An inventory file in Ansible is where you define the hosts and groups for your automation tasks. Let's create an inventory.yml file that categorizes your machines into groups. Fill in your host information, ip address, and user name & key file in the inventory.yml file. If you're unsure how to group your machines, just put them all in the same group for now and we will regroup them in the next section.

Section 3: Discovering OS Families with Ansible

Now that you have your inventory set, let's start with the `os_family_discovery.yml`` playbook. This playbook will help you identify the operating system family of your hosts, which is crucial for tailoring further automation tasks to specific OS types.

Run this playbook against all of your hosts to get information on which family they belong to.

ansible-playbook playbooks/os_family_discovery.yml

Now that you know what family each host is, I recommend going back to the inventory.yml and grouping the hosts based on family (Debian, RedHat, etc.). If you want to furthur subdivide your hosts you can have a host in multiple groups as well.

Section 4: The Fresh Install - Setting Up New Machines

Next up is the fresh_install.yml playbook. This playbook is designed to install a suite of essential utilities on new machines, whether they're running Debian/Ubuntu or RedHat/CentOS. Notably, this playbook also imports the install_docker.yml playbook, automating Docker installation as part of the setup process.

ansible-playbook playbooks/fresh_install.yml --ask-become

This will prompt you to input the BECOME password, which is the sudo password for your target machine

Section 5: Monitoring Docker Containers

After setting up your machines, let's focus on Docker with the docker_status.yml playbook. This playbook checks the status of your Docker containers, ensuring they are running as expected.

If you have hosts already running docker, you will want to add them to the inventory.yml file in a group named Docker.

If you don't have any hosts running docker, pick a host that you just ran the fresh install script on and add it to the Docker group in your inventory.yml. Then execute the first_container playbook which will stand up your first Docker container.

ansible-playbook playbooks/first_container.yml

Now add the following to your compose_file_paths for the docekr host in your inventory.yml file:

~/firstContainer/docker-compose.yml

You can now run docker_status.yml against your docker hosts to check the status of your containers. This playbook will return all green if your containers are all good, and it will fail if any container is in status "exited"

ansible-playbook playbooks/docker_status.yml

Section 6: Keeping Docker Containers Up-to-Date

Lastly, we have the docker_update_containers.yml playbook. This playbook is crucial for updating your Docker containers with the latest images. It also re-imports the docker_status.yml playbook to check the status of containers after the update.

At this point you should have all of your hosts running docker containers in the Docker group of your inventory.yml file.

To update your containers this playbook brings your containers down, deletes their images, and brings them back up to pull the updated images.

YOU MUST HAVE PERSISTANT STORAGE SETUP! IF YOU DON'T THEN THIS PLAYBOOK WILL DELETE ALL OF YOUR DATA FROM YOUR CONTAINERS - consider yourself warned.

ansible-playbook playbooks/docker_update_containers.yml

Conclusion:

Throughout this post, we've explored a series of Ansible playbooks designed to automate various aspects of your homelab. From initial setup with SSH key-based authentication and inventory creation to managing and updating Docker containers, these playbooks are the building blocks for a highly efficient homelab environment. Remember, Ansible's flexibility allows you to expand and customize these automations to suit your specific needs. Dive in, experiment, and watch your homelab thrive with the power of automation!