Day 88 of 100 Days : Getting Started with Ansible Galaxy and Roles

Welcome back to Day 88 of our 100 Days of DevOps journey! Today, we’ll explore how to organize, manage, and reuse your automation workflows using Ansible Galaxy and Roles. Let’s dive in!

Why Use Ansible Roles?

As your Ansible Playbooks grow in complexity, they can become lengthy and difficult to manage. For instance:

A single Playbook with 50+ tasks, 20 variables, handlers, and metadata can easily exceed 2000 lines of YAML.

This is where Ansible Roles come in! Roles modularize your automation into reusable components, improving:

Readability: Break down Playbooks into smaller files.
Reusability: Share and reuse roles across multiple projects.
Collaboration: Work effectively with teams using predefined structures.

What Are Ansible Roles?

Ansible Roles are a standardized way to organize your Playbooks by splitting them into smaller, logical components within a predefined folder structure. This structure makes it easier to manage variables, tasks, handlers, and templates.

Folder Structure of a Role

When you create a role, it generates the following structure:

roles/
  └── <role_name>/
      ├── tasks/
      │   └── main.yml
      ├── handlers/
      │   └── main.yml
      ├── vars/
      │   └── main.yml
      ├── defaults/
      │   └── main.yml
      ├── files/
      ├── templates/
      ├── meta/
      │   └── main.yml
      └── README.md

Each folder has a specific purpose:

tasks/: Contains tasks to execute.
handlers/: Defines handlers triggered by tasks.
vars/ and defaults/: Store variables.
files/ and templates/: Store static files and templates.
meta/: Contains metadata about the role.

What Is Ansible Galaxy?

Ansible Galaxy is a platform for discovering, sharing, and reusing Ansible content, including roles and collections. Think of it as a package manager for Ansible automation.

Why Use Ansible Galaxy?

Speed: Download prebuilt roles instead of writing them from scratch.
Collaboration: Share your roles with the community.
Consistency: Follow standardized practices for roles and collections.

Key Commands in Ansible Galaxy

Initialize a Role:
```
 ansible-galaxy role init <role_name>
```
Example:
```
 ansible-galaxy role init apache_setup
```
This generates the folder structure for the apache_setup role.
Install a Role: Download roles from Ansible Galaxy:
```
 ansible-galaxy install <role_name>
```
List Installed Roles:
```
 ansible-galaxy list
```
Share a Role: Upload your role to Ansible Galaxy:
```
 ansible-galaxy role publish
```

Example: Using Ansible Galaxy and Roles Together

Scenario:

You want to install Apache and deploy a web application using a role.

Step 1: Create a Role

Initialize a new role:

ansible-galaxy role init apache_web

This creates a role with the necessary folder structure in roles/apache_web/.

Step 2: Define the Role’s Tasks

Edit roles/apache_web/tasks/main.yml:

---
- name: Install Apache
  apt:
    name: apache2
    state: present

- name: Deploy Web Application
  copy:
    src: /path/to/app
    dest: /var/www/html

Step 3: Use the Role in a Playbook

Create a Playbook site.yml to call the role:

---
- hosts: web
  become: true
  roles:
    - apache_web

Step 4: Run the Playbook

Execute the Playbook:

ansible-playbook -i inventory site.yml

To share the role on Ansible Galaxy:

Create a Galaxy account.
Package your role and publish it using:
```
 ansible-galaxy role publish
```

Benefits of Ansible Galaxy + Roles

By combining Ansible Galaxy and Roles, you can:

Leverage community-contributed roles for common tasks.
Standardize your automation workflows.
Save time and effort by reusing existing content.