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Concepts

Ansible Roles​

Ansible Roles are a way to organize and reuse automation code in a structured, modular format.

A role groups related Ansible content — tasks, handlers, templates, files, and variables — into a single, self-contained directory. This makes playbooks cleaner, easier to maintain, and reusable across multiple projects.

roles/
  nginx/
    tasks/
      main.yml
    handlers/
      main.yml
    templates/
      nginx.conf.j2
    vars/
      main.yml

Installing Ansible Roles​

Fetch and install all required Ansible roles from the requirements.yml file before running any playbooks.

  • Runs inside a Docker container specified by ansibleDockerImage.
  • Uses a Bitbucket SSH key (retrieved securely via Vault) for authentication when fetching private roles or repositories.
  • Installs roles using:
ansible-galaxy install -p playbooks/roles -r requirements.yml
  • ANSIBLE_LOCAL_TEMP is set to $[WORKSPACE]/.ansible to define a temporary working directory for Ansible operations.

Ensures all required roles are locally available in playbooks/roles/ before any playbook execution.

Prepare SSH Key for Ansible​

Make a Jenkins SSH private key available for Ansible to establish SSH connections with managed nodes. Copies the Jenkins agent's SSH private key to the workspace:

install -m 600 /home/jenkins/.ssh/id_rsa ${WORKSPACE}/jenkins_id_rsa

Provides the private key (jenkins_id_rsa) that will later be used by Ansible for host authentication.

Execute Ansible Playbook​

Run the main Ansible playbook using the previously installed roles and configured SSH key.

  • Executes within the same Ansible Docker image (ansibleDockerImage) for consistency.
  • Runs the main playbook playbooks/main.yml with elevated privileges (-b flag).
ansible-playbook -i ${ansibleInventoryPath} \
  --private-key ../jenkins_id_rsa \
  -u jenkins \
  -b \
  playbooks/main.yml \
  -e 'WORKSPACE=${WORKSPACE}' \
  -e 'clamav_token=${env.CLAMAV_FLOCK_TOKEN}'

Executes the infrastructure automation defined in main.yml. Passes necessary runtime variables for environment-specific configurations.