Ansible Infrastructure Variables Structure
The purpose of this Ansible playbook example is to demonstrate how you can structure variables a Ansible playbook which works with cloud modules. It is not specific to cloud modules, but really well suited for any playbook which does work which is not on hosts.
In "normal" Ansible playbook, you can use host groups and often use host_vars and group_vars to set different values
for variables for hosts in different groups. Host groups are often staging and production but can also be different
regions such as EU, US, Asia.
When you provision infrastructure (and not hosts), it is not as clear how to structure your variables. This playbook intends to give you a good example.
Secrets handling is another problem, and in this playbook we show you how to use git-crypt to encrypt specific
sensitive files.
Read the full blog post at: https://blog.crisp.se/2018/02/18/maxwenzin/how-to-structure-ansible-variables-when-provisioning-infrastructure
How to run
Before you can run the demonstration playbook, you will need to decrypt the repository using git-crypt unlock ./demo-git-crypt-key.
In this demo, the key is published in the repository for demo purposes. You should of course never do this with any real project.
Unlock the encrypted files by: git-crypt unlock ./demo-git-crypt-key
Then run the playbook with:
ansible-playbook -i environments/${ENVIRONMENT} deploy.yml
where ${ENVIRONMENT} is germany or greatbritain.
Example output
Troubleshooting
ERROR! 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xa9 in position 14: invalid start byte
You have probably not decrypted the repository secrets. Do it by running: git-crypt unlock ./demo-git-crypt-key