Summary

This chapter communicated and deployed infrastructure with the remote Linux and Windows hosts by using different Ansible ad-hoc commands and playbooks.

We started with ad-hoc commands to connect with Linux and Windows hosts. We introduced additional variables required to connect to both of them. They were as follows:

Linux

• ansible_user
• ansible_password
• ansible_ssh_common_args
  • Disables host key checking

Windows

• ansible_user
• ansible_password
• ansible_connection
  • Defines the protocol to connect to the remote host
• ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation
  • Ignores certificate warnings

Next, we looked into making how you can implement the same commands using playbooks. We introduced vars and vars_prompts to make the playbooks repeatable.

Building on the constructs learned you configured the Linux host as an Nginx server and the Windows host as an IIS server.

To configure a Linux host, we introduced the following essential packages and modules:

• package: An OS package manager for Linux to install, update, and remove packages.
• become: Elevate permissions to root user

Similarly, to configure the Windows Host, we introduced the following:

• win_feature: To install or uninstall roles or features for Windows Server.
• win_copy: To copy a file on the local host to a remote Windows location.
• win_file: To create empty files, update file modifications of existing files, and/or to create directories.
• Chocolatey: A package manager for Windows that automates software installs.
• win_chocolatey: To install the dotnetcore-windowshosting package from the public Chocolatey feed.
• notify: To notify if a change occurs.
• handler: To execute an action based on a notification and consists of:
  • name
  • action

Delete the environments

In case you are going to visit the rest of the course later, you can delete the infrastructure to avoid any unexpected bills.

Disclaimer: Run the playbook at your own risk!
It is highly recommended you use a development AWS account and Azure subscription before executing these playbooks.

You can review the playbooks in the sections for Deploy to Azure and Deploy to AWS to delete the infrastructure.