Ansible on Docker for automated deployments and pipelines

You can build and use Ansible as Docker container to integrate Ansible tasks and playbooks execution in pipelines or automated jobs.

First!

You can download the Ansible Docker image from Docker Hub or build in your local environment from this source.

Run

Quick way, pull image from https://dockerhub.com and start to play (for building skip and go to Build section):

docker run --rm -t devxops/ansible <ansible command and arguments>

# Ansible version
docker run --rm -t devxops/ansible ansible --version

Run an Ansible Project

A very basic project is included in this repository but, of course, you can use your own without including any pice of this repository.

In order to run your Ansible projects you have to run Docker Ansible container and mount project folder as volume.

Let's do it!

My project is stored in /ansible folder, the same folder includes a keys folder (content is ignored from GIT) where I must store remote hosts private keys.

Basic project structure:

ansible/
├── inventory.ini << Hosts configuration
├── keys
│   └── id_rsa << No included, set yours
├── playbook.yml
└── roles
    └── basic
        └── tasks
            └── main.yml

If you want to test the Ansible project included in this repository before running on yours:

• Configure one or more hosts in inventory.ini file
• Save hosts private key in keys/ folder
• Run the Ansible Playbook through Docker container

Run Playbook

From every Ansible project you can run Ansible playbooks by this Docker command:

docker run --rm -t --name ansible -v $PWD/ansible:/ansible devxops/ansible ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini playbook.yml

In this example Ansible source code is stored in [project-root]/ansible folder, if your Ansible source code is in the root folder, modify Docker run command with:

-v $PWD:ansible

About Docker run command arguments:

--rm : Container will be deleted at the end of execution

-t : Allocate a pseudo-tty to display stdout

--name : Name of temporary container

-v : Mount Ansible source code volume in /ansible container folder

How to build

You can use make command (recommended) or build manually with Docker commands.

Build with make and default Ansible / Python versions:

make build

Build with make and custom Ansible / Python versions:

# Ansible 
make build ANSIBLE_VERSION=2.9.10

# Python
make build PYTHON_VERSION=3.7.8-slim-buster

# Ansible + Python
make build ANSIBLE_VERSION=2.9.10 PYTHON_VERSION=3.7.8-slim-buster

If you want to skip make command, build image with Docker commands:

# Use default version values
docker build -t docker-ansible .

# Set you Ansible and/or Python version
docker build -t docker-ansible --build-arg ANSIBLE_VERSION=2.9.10 --build-arg PYTHON_VERSION=3.7.8-slim-buster .

Ansible Configuration File

Ansible supports several sources for configuring its behavior, including an ini file named ansible.cfg, environment variables, command-line options, playbook keywords, and variables.

For global configuration available in a distributed container, set configuration in the ansible.cfg file and build with the Docker image. All settings will be available at every run without any extra argument.

If you need to customize every Ansible project, add a custom ansible.cfg file in project root folder (the same folder mounted into Docker container)

Changes can be made and used in a configuration file which will be searched for in the following order:

• ANSIBLE_CONFIG (environment variable if set)
• /ansible/ansible.cfg custom settings for every project, it overrides global configuration file, you must replicate all required settings or remove the file.
• /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg : included for global settings during Docker image builds, in the root folder there is an example of all available settings, update to your preferences.

Check current Ansible configuration file by this commands:

<docker run command> ansible-config view

License

MIT