AWS CDK example in Typescript – provision an AWX server

This post provides an example of using AWS CDK in Typescript. Ansible Tower and AWX We have used open-source Ansible extensively in the past. While the automation is convenient, the lack of UI makes it not as suitable as a team collaboration tool. One way to allow team collaboration with open-source Ansible, is to use … Read moreAWS CDK example in Typescript – provision an AWX server

Automated Deployment Pipeline 3 of 3

Background We have previously covered a pipeline example with Jenkins calling Ansible to leverage OpenSSH configuration and Ansible inventory. We also discussed a use case with declarative pipeline. In this posting, I will provide another advanced example, built on declarative pipeline. The pipeline file will be pulled from Git repository. Also, the script is executed … Read moreAutomated Deployment Pipeline 3 of 3

Automated Deployment Pipeline 2 of 3

In this posting, we continue to discuss Jenkins’ ability to automate deployment routines. Jenkins supports freestyle project out of the box, as well as Pipeline with several plugins. Freestyle project allows user to specify multiple steps on UI. This does not scale well when your entire process involves many steps. As explained on Jenkins’ website: … Read moreAutomated Deployment Pipeline 2 of 3

Automated Deployment Pipeline 1 of 3

The business case You launched a software application. You installed it on two customer sites. You support the application mostly by SSH to customer server and run Bash commands, or slightly better, Bash scripts. The product is a hit to the market. You hired 20 support specialists in a customer service department. The dream client … Read moreAutomated Deployment Pipeline 1 of 3

Ansible at scale 1 of 2

The Ansible In Depth white paper outlines Ansible’s use cases in four categories: Configuration management Application deployment Orchestration: for coordinating a multi-machine process such as interacting with load balancer and rolling cluster upgrade As-needed task execution: ad-hoc tasks on large number of hosts At work, my original automation scheme involves several Ansible Playbooks that started … Read moreAnsible at scale 1 of 2

SSH key pair for access between instances in CloudFormation

Update 2023: the practice outlined in this post has been outdated. This post is for archive ony. We use CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure including private and public subnets, as well as EC2 instances. It is a good practice to place as many instances as possible in private subnet and access those only from Bastion Host … Read moreSSH key pair for access between instances in CloudFormation