Automating the Complexity Out of Server Setup With Ansible

Server automation now plays an essential role in systems administration, due to the disposable nature of modern application environments. Configuration management tools such as Ansible are typically used to streamline the process of automating server setup by establishing standard procedures for new servers while also reducing human error associated with manual setups.

In this Tech Talk, you’ll learn how to create and execute Ansible playbooks to automate your server infrastructure setup. We’ll see some of the most important Ansible features and how to leverage them to create clean and flexible automation for your servers.

Erika Heidi is a software engineer and DevOps turned writer, passionate about producing and presenting technical content for a variety of audiences. As a long-term Linux adopter and open source enthusiast, Erika is focused on lowering the barrier of entrance to the technologies empowering modern web application ecosystems today. Erika is a senior technical writer at the DigitalOcean Community.

This presentation is part of a workshop kit that provides a set of resources for a speaker to host an event and deliver an introductory talk on Ansible. The following resources are included:

• Slides and speaker notes including short demo videos and commands for running an optional live demo. This talk runs for roughly 50 minutes.
• A GitHub repository containing the demo app code and the necessary Ansible scripts to deploy that application to an Ubuntu server.
• A detailed tutorial, which walks a user through rolling out the Travellist demo Laravel application on a remote server.