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Get Started: Configure Ansible on an Azure VM

  • Article

This article shows how to install Ansible on an Ubuntu VM in Azure.

In this article, you learn how to:

  • Create a resource group
  • Create an Ubuntu virtual machine
  • Install Ansible on the virtual machine
  • Connect to the virtual machine via SSH
  • Configure Ansible on the virtual machine

Prerequisites

  • Azure subscription: If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.
  • Azure service principal: Create a service principal, making note of the following values: appId, displayName, password, and tenant.

Create a virtual machine

  1. Create an Azure resource group.

    az group create --name QuickstartAnsible-rg --location eastus

    You might need to replace the --location parameter with the appropriate value for your environment.

  2. Create the Azure virtual machine for Ansible.

    az vm create \
--resource-group QuickstartAnsible-rg \
--name QuickstartAnsible-vm \
--image Ubuntu2204 \
--admin-username azureuser \
--admin-password <password>

    Replace the <password> your password.

  3. Get the public Ip address of the Azure virtual machine.

    az vm show -d -g QuickstartAnsible-rg -n QuickstartAnsible-vm --query publicIps -o tsv

Connect to your virtual machine via SSH

Using the SSH command, connect to your virtual machine's public IP address.

ssh azureuser@<vm_ip_address>

Replace the <vm_ip_address> with the appropriate value returned in previous commands.

Install Ansible on the virtual machine

Ansible with azure.azcollection

Run the following commands to configure Ansible on Ubuntu:

#!/bin/bash

sudo apt update

sudo apt install software-properties-common

sudo add-apt-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible

sudo apt install ansible

# Install Ansible az collection for interacting with Azure. (optional)
ansible-galaxy collection install azure.azcollection --force 

# Install Ansible modules for Azure (optional)
sudo pip3 install -r ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/azure/azcollection/requirements.txt

Key points:

  • Ansible control node requires Python 2 (version 2.7) or Python 3 (versions 3.5 and higher) installed. Ansible 4.0.0 and ansible-core 2.11 has a soft dependency on Python 3.8, but functions with lower versions. However, Ansible 5.0.0 and ansible-core 2.12 will require 3.8 and newer.

Create Azure credentials

To configure the Ansible credentials, you need the following information:

  • Your Azure subscription ID and tenant ID
  • The service principal application ID and secret

Configure the Ansible credentials using one of the following techniques:

Option 1: Create Ansible credentials file

In this section, you create a local credentials file to provide credentials to Ansible. For security reasons, credential files should only be used in development environments.

For more information about defining Ansible credentials, see Providing Credentials to Azure Modules.

  1. Once you've successfully connected to the host virtual machine, create and open a file named credentials:

    mkdir ~/.azure
vi ~/.azure/credentials

  2. Insert the following lines into the file. Replace the placeholders with the service principal values.

    [default]
subscription_id=<subscription_id>
client_id=<service_principal_app_id>
secret=<service_principal_password>
tenant=<service_principal_tenant_id>

  3. Save and close the file.

Option 2: Define Ansible environment variables

On the host virtual machine, export the service principal values to configure your Ansible credentials.

export AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID=<subscription_id>
export AZURE_CLIENT_ID=<service_principal_app_id>
export AZURE_SECRET=<service_principal_password>
export AZURE_TENANT=<service_principal_tenant_id>

Test Ansible installation

You now have a virtual machine with Ansible installed and configured!

This section shows how to create a test resource group within your new Ansible configuration. If you don't need to do that, you can skip this section.

Option 1: Use an ad-hoc ansible command

Run the following ad-hoc Ansible command to create a resource group:


#Ansible with azure.azcollection
ansible localhost -m azure.azcollection.azure_rm_resourcegroup -a "name=<resource_group_name> location=<location>"

Replace <resource_group_name> and <location> with your values.

Option 2: Write and run an Ansible playbook

  1. Save the following code as create_rg.yml.

    Ansible with azure.azcollection

    - hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  collections:
    - azure.azcollection
  tasks:
    - name: Creating resource group
      azure_rm_resourcegroup:
        name: "<resource_group_name"
        location: "<location>"

    Replace <resource_group_name> and <location> with your values.

  2. Run the playbook using ansible-playbook.

    ansible-playbook create_rg.yml

Read more about the azure.azcollection.

Clean up resources

  1. Save the following code as delete_rg.yml.

    ---
- hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - name: Deleting resource group - "{{ name }}"
      azure_rm_resourcegroup:
        name: "{{ name }}"
        state: absent
      register: rg
    - debug:
        var: rg

  2. Run the playbook using the ansible-playbook command. Replace the placeholder with the name of the resource group to be deleted. All resources within the resource group will be deleted.

    ansible-playbook delete_rg.yml --extra-vars "name=<resource_group>"

    Key points:

    • Because of the register variable and debug section of the playbook, the results display when the command finishes.

Next steps

Ansible on Azure