README

Goal

Deploy a python application to EC2 instances using Ansible

How does it work ?

• Ansible playbook creates a set of EC2 instances with its associated SG and ELB
• Python application (Flask) files are copied to EC2 instances
• The container is built and started using docker-compose
• A Nginx process is started to redirect incoming traffic from port 80 to the docker container
• Instances are then attached to the ELB

Prerequisite

• Working ansible installation
• AWS credentials (access & secret key, ec2 ssh key)

Setup

AWS Access Key

• Wrap your AWS credentials in an Ansible Vault file that are expected to contain two variables : aws_access_key and aws_secret_key
• The playbooks expect the the Vault file to be named aws_keys.yml

ansible-vault create aws_keys.yml
[type in a password]
[type in aws_access_key: ...]
[type in aws_secret_key: ...]

AWS EC2 SSH key

• Add your EC2 private ssh key in the ansible.cfg file :

private_key_file = /Users/myself/key.pem

Review settings

• Infrastructure settings can be edited in the vars.yml file
  • AWS region, instance type, ...

Run

• There are two playbook available :
  • flask.yml will provision infratructure and deploy a containerized Python Flask application
  • clean.yml will cleanup all infrastructure
• To run theses playbooks, you can use make

make deploy
make clean

What could be done better

• Python application container should be built outside the target instances and pushed to a registry
• Flask built-in appliction server is not production grade, should be replaced it with a compliant WSGI server