🏭 Ansinetes

Automated deployment of nginx web servers behind an Azure Load Balancer.

Infrastructure is provisioned using Terraform, then the private machines are configured using Ansible through a jumpbox.

The workers only have private IP addresses. The jumpbox is the only virtual machine exposed for SSH access. The load balancer also provides outbound connectivity to the workers.

🔧 Requirements

• Terraform
• Azure CLI
• Ansible

🛠️ Setup

Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/pathei-kosmos/ansinetes.git
cd ansinetes

Initialize the Terraform project:

terraform init

🚀 Usage

Start by connecting Azure CLI to the Azure subscription you want to use for deployment:

az login

Copy the example variables file:

cp terraform.tfvars.example terraform.tfvars

Three variables need to be set:

• subscription_id: ID of the Azure subscription to use for deployment.
• admin_cidr: public IPv4 CIDR allowed to connect to the jumpbox over SSH, for example 203.0.113.10/32.
• admin_ssh_public_key: public SSH key used to connect to the virtual machines.

The syntax of the terraform.tfvars file is as follows:

subscription_id      = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
admin_cidr           = "203.0.113.10/32"
admin_ssh_public_key = "ssh-ed25519 AAAA..."

You can then check the resources to be deployed:

terraform plan

If everything looks fine, start the deployment:

terraform apply

Once the infrastructure is deployed, generate the Ansible inventory from the Terraform outputs:

terraform output -raw ansible_inventory > playbooks/inventory.ini

Then configure the nginx workers:

ansible-playbook -i playbooks/inventory.ini playbooks/nginx.yml

Ansible connects to the private workers through the jumpbox using SSH ProxyJump.

If your SSH key is not automatically detected, specify it manually:

ansible-playbook -i playbooks/inventory.ini playbooks/nginx.yml --private-key ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

🧪 Verification

The public IP address of the load balancer can be retrieved with:

terraform output -raw load_balancer_ip

You can then query the nginx servers:

curl "http://$(terraform output -raw load_balancer_ip)"

Each worker serves a page containing its hostname.

🧹 Cleanup

To delete the deployed resources:

terraform destroy