Ansible Multi-Tier Infrastructure Lab

Project Overview

This project demonstrates how configuration management tools can be used to provision and manage infrastructure components such as load balancers, web servers, and databases in a controlled lab environment.

Architecture Overview

Network Topology and Static IP Routing

ASCII Representation

                 +--------------------+
                 |    Ansible Host    |
                 +----------+---------+
                            |
           +-----------------+-----------------+
           v                                   v
+-------------------+               +-------------------+
|     server_2      |-------------->|     server_3      |
| Load Balancer(80) |               |  App Server(8080) |
+---------+---------+               +---------+---------+
                            |
                            v
                  +-------------------+
                  |     server_1      |
                  |  Database (5432)  |
                  +-------------------+

Getting Started

Build and start the infrastructure:

                    ./ansible-lab.sh init
./ansible-lab.sh start
                

Initialization Process: Key Generation and Authentication Flow

How To Use the Lab

Execute these steps inside the host container, which acts as your Ansible Control Node.

1. Access the Control Node

docker exec -it host bash

2. Create the Inventory File (`inventory.ini`)

[databases]
server_1 ansible_host=172.20.0.10 ansible_user=root

[load_balancers]
server_2 ansible_host=172.20.0.20 ansible_user=root

[app_servers]
server_3 ansible_host=172.20.0.5 ansible_user=root

[all:vars]
ansible_ssh_common_args='-o StrictHostKeyChecking=no'

3. Create your First Playbook (`ping.yml`)

---
- name: Ping all servers to verify connectivity
  hosts: all
  tasks:
    - name: Ensure target machines are responding
      ansible.builtin.ping:

4. Execute the Playbook

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini ping.yml

5. Working with Roles

ansible-galaxy init roles/nginx

Create roles/nginx/tasks/main.yml:

---
- name: Install Nginx
  ansible.builtin.apt:
    name: nginx
    state: present
    update_cache: yes

Create master playbook site.yml:

---
- name: Configure Load Balancers
  hosts: load_balancers
  become: yes
  roles:
    - nginx

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini site.yml