Automate Azure App Service setup using Ansible and Azure DevOps pipeline | How to integrate Ansible with Azure DevOps | How to Create WebApp in Azure Cloud using Ansible

Ansible is an open-source, configuration management tool that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, and application deployments. 

Ansible Playbooks

Ansible playbooks allow you to direct Ansible to configure your environment. Playbooks are coded using YAML so as to be human-readable. 

Automate Azure Web App setup using Ansible and Azure pipeline

Integrate Ansible with Azure Cloud

Integrating Ansible with Microsoft Azure allows you to automate and manage your Azure infrastructure using Ansible playbooks and modules. Ansible provides a collection of Azure-specific modules that enable you to provision and configure resources in Azure.

To configure Azure credentials, you need the following information:

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

Pre-requisites:

• Azure account subscription, click here if you don't have one.
• Azure CLI needs to be installed.
• Service principal to create any resources in Azure cloud
• Microsoft organization

Login to Azure

az login

Enter Microsoft credentials

Create Azure Service Principal

Run the following commands to create an Azure Service Principal:

az ad sp create-for-rbac --name ansible-azure-sp --role Contributor --scopes /subscriptions/<subscription_id>

Save the above output in a file as you will not be able retrieve later.

Create an Ansible playbook - create-linux-app-svc.yml

Create a simple playbook to create resource group in Azure and also a Azure App Service. Make sure you modify the name of the resource group, Azure WebApp and location below.

- hosts: localhost

connection: local

vars:

resource_group: myResourceGroup

webapp_name: myfirstAwesomeWebApp

plan_name: myAppServicePlan

location: eastus

tasks:

- name: Ensure resource group exists

azure_rm_resourcegroup:

name: myResourceGroup

location: East US

register: rg_result

- debug:

var: rg_result

- name: Create App Service on Linux with Java Runtime

azure_rm_webapp:

resource_group: "{{ resource_group }}"

name: "{{ webapp_name }}"

plan:

resource_group: "{{ resource_group }}"

name: "{{ plan_name }}"

is_linux: true

sku: S1

number_of_workers: 1

frameworks:

- name: "java"

version: "8"

settings:

java_container: tomcat

java_container_version: 9.0

Create Azure YAML build pipeline:

Login to Azure Devops --> https://dev.azure.com

Select project dashboard.

Go to Pipelines -> New pipeline --> Click on Azure Repos Git or any SCM where you have playbooks stored. Select repo, click on Starter pipeline.

Add below four pipeline variables with value received from service principal creation.

AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID

AZURE_CLIENT_ID

AZURE_SECRET

AZURE_TENANT

Add below tasks:

• Install Ansible on build agent
• Install Ansible rm module on build agent
• Execute Ansible playbook for creating resource group in Azure cloud.

trigger:

- main

pr: none # Disable PR triggers, can be adjusted as needed

pool:

vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'

steps:

- script: |

# Install Ansible

pip3 install "ansible==2.9.17"

displayName: 'Install Ansible'

- script: |

# Install Ansible rm module

pip3 install ansible[azure]

displayName: 'Install Ansible rm module'

- script: |

# Run Ansible playbook to create Azure App Service

ansible-playbook create-linux-app-svc.yml

displayName: 'Run Ansible Playbook'

env:

AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID: $(AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID)

AZURE_CLIENT_ID: $(AZURE_CLIENT_ID)

AZURE_SECRET: $(AZURE_SECRET)

AZURE_TENANT: $(AZURE_TENANT)

Save the pipeline and run it.

Now Login to Azure cloud to see if the App Service have been created.

Clean up service principal & Resource Group

az ad sp list --display-name ansible-azure-sp --output table

az ad sp delete --id <pass_the_id>

az group delete --name myResourceGroup --yes --no-wait

Delete Resource group and App Service using Ansible playbook: delete-linux-app-svc.yml

- name: Delete Azure App Service
  hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  vars:
    resource_group: myResourceGroup
    webapp_name: myfirstAwesomeWebApp
  tasks:
  - name:
    azure_rm_webapp:
      name: "{{ webapp_name }}"
      resource_group: "{{ resource_group }}"
      state: absent