How to Use Ansible to Manage Your AWS Resources: Complete Guide

Managing AWS resources through the web console can be time-consuming and error-prone. This complete tutorial shows you how to use Ansible - a powerful automation tool - to manage your AWS resources declaratively. Instead of manually clicking through the AWS console, you can write simple playbook files that declare the exact infrastructure state you want, and Ansible will handle the rest.

Why Use Ansible with AWS?

Ansible is an orchestration tool that lets you write plain-text playbook files that declare the software profile and ideal state you would like applied to a target server. While AWS provides its own orchestration tools like CloudFormation and Elastic Kubernetes Service, Ansible offers a more familiar way of operating if you are already using it for on-premises operations.

The key advantage of Ansible is its declarative approach. You simply declare the precise configuration results you want, and Ansible reads your playbook to produce them. This makes complex, layered AWS deployments surprisingly simple to execute.

Preparing Your Local Environment

Before you can use Ansible to manage AWS resources, you need to set up your local environment with the necessary tools and dependencies. This step by step guide walks you through the complete setup process.

Installing Python and PIP

Ansible requires Python to communicate with AWS through Boto3. Most modern Linux distributions come with Python pre-installed. Here's how to install PIP and the AWS CLI on Ubuntu:

Configuring AWS Credentials

After installing the AWS CLI, run the configure command and enter your AWS access key ID and secret access key. You can get these credentials from the Security Credentials page in the AWS Management Console.

Ansible will automatically look for AWS credentials in the credentials file. When you run ansible-playbook without specifying other authentication methods, it will use these credentials.

Installing Ansible and Boto3

Now install Ansible using pip3. Ansible will use Boto3 - the AWS SDK for Python - to communicate with the AWS API. Make sure to install both boto and boto3 packages.

Verify your installation by running ansible --version:

Creating Your First Ansible Playbook

Now that your environment is set up, let's create a simple playbook to demonstrate Ansible's AWS capabilities. This step by step guide will show you how to create an S3 bucket using Ansible.

Creating the Hosts File

Normally, the hosts file tells Ansible where to find remote servers. But for AWS, since the resources do not exist yet, we will point Ansible to localhost and Boto3 will handle the connections behind the scenes.

Creating the S3 Playbook

Now create a playbook file (test-ansible.yml) that will use the aws_s3 module to create a new S3 bucket. Remember that S3 bucket names must be globally unique.

Running the Playbook

Execute the playbook using ansible-playbook command with the -i flag to specify your hosts file:

Common AWS Modules for Ansible

Ansible provides many modules for managing AWS resources beyond S3. Here are some of the most commonly used modules: