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Ansible NGINX Configuration Role

This role configures NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus on your target host.

Important

This role is still in active development. There may be unidentified issues and the role variables may change as development continues.

Role Requirements

Ansible

If you want to use this role, you will need to use a supported version of Ansible core and Jinja2 as well as a few Ansible collections.

For ease of use, you can install and/or upgrade Ansible core, Jinja2, and the aforementioned Ansible collections by running the following four commands on your Ansible host:

pip install --upgrade -r https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nginxinc/ansible-role-nginx-config/main/.github/workflows/requirements/requirements_ansible.txt
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nginxinc/ansible-role-nginx-config/main/.github/workflows/requirements/requirements_collections.yml
ansible-galaxy install --force -r requirements_collections.yml
rm -f requirements_collections.yml

This will also ensure you are deploying/running this role with a fully tested version of the aforementioned packages/collections.

Ansible core

• This role is developed and tested with maintained versions of Ansible core and Python.

• When using Ansible core, you will also need to install the following Ansible collections:

  ---
  collections:
    - name: ansible.posix
      version: 1.6.2
    - name: community.general
      version: 10.0.1
    - name: community.crypto # Only required if you plan to to test the NGINX Plus Molecule scenario
      version: 2.22.3
    - name: community.docker # Only required if you plan to use Molecule
      version: 4.1.0

• Instructions on how to install Ansible core can be found in the Ansible docs.

• Instructions on how to install Ansible collections can be found in the Ansible collections guide.

Tip

You can alternatively install the Ansible community distribution (what is still known Ansible -- instead of Ansible core) if you don't want to manage individual collections.

Jinja2

• This role uses Jinja2 templates. Ansible core installs Jinja2 by default, but depending on your install and/or upgrade path, you might be running an outdated version of Jinja2. The minimum version of Jinja2 required for the role to properly function is 3.1.
• Instructions on how to install Jinja2 can be found in the Jinja2 website.

Testing suite (Optional)

If you want to contribute to this role, you will also need to install Ansible Lint and Molecule.

Ansible Lint (Optional)

• Ansible Lint is used to lint the role for both Ansible best practices and potential Ansible/YAML issues.

• Instructions on how to install Ansible Lint can be found in the Ansible Lint website.

• Once installed, using Ansible Lint is as easy as running:

  ansible-lint

• For ease of use, you can install and/or upgrade Ansible Lint by running the following command on your Ansible host:

  pip install -r https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nginxinc/ansible-role-nginx-config/main/.github/workflows/requirements/requirements_ansible_lint.txt

Molecule (Optional)

• Molecule is used to test the various functionalities of the role.

• Instructions on how to install Molecule can be found in the Molecule website. You will also need to install the Molecule plugins package and the Docker Python SDK.

• To run the NGINX Plus/App Protect config Molecule tests, you must copy your NGINX Plus/App Protect license to the role's Molecule common/files/license directory.

  You can alternatively add your NGINX Plus/App Protect repository certificate and key to the local environment. Run the following commands to export these files as base64-encoded variables and execute the Molecule tests:

  export NGINX_CRT=$( cat <path to your certificate file> | base64 )
  export NGINX_KEY=$( cat <path to your key file> | base64 )
  molecule test -s plus

• For ease of use, you can install and/or upgrade Molecule, the Molecule plugins package, and the Docker Python SDK by running the following command on your Ansible host:

  pip install --upgrade -r https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nginxinc/ansible-role-nginx-config/main/.github/workflows/requirements/requirements_molecule.txt

Role Installation

This role can be installed via either Ansible Galaxy (the Ansible community marketplace) or by cloning this repo. Once installed, you will need to include the role in your Ansible playbook using the roles keyword, the import_role module, or the include_role module.

Ansible Galaxy

To install the latest stable release of the role on your system, use:

ansible-galaxy install nginxinc.nginx_config

Alternatively, if you have already installed the role, you can update the role to the latest release by using:

ansible-galaxy install -f nginxinc.nginx_config

To use the role, include the following task in your playbook:

- name: Configure NGINX
  ansible.builtin.include_role:
    name: nginxinc.nginx_config

Git

To pull the latest edge commit of the role from GitHub, use:

git clone https://github.com/nginxinc/ansible-role-nginx-config.git

To use the role, include the following task in your playbook:

- name: Configure NGINX
  ansible.builtin.include_role:
    name: <path/to/repo> # e.g. <roles/ansible-role-nginx-config> if you clone the repo inside your project's roles directory

Platforms

The NGINX config Ansible role supports all platforms supported by NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus.

Note

You should be able to use this role to configure any NGINX installation -- wherever/however it's been installed -- at your own risk. Any potential bugs with the role involving unsupported installation methods/platforms will be addressed in a best effort manner and might be outright dismissed.*

Role Variables

This role has multiple variables. The descriptions and defaults for all these variables can be found in the defaults/main/ directory in the following files:

Name	Description
main.yml	NGINX simple config variables
selinux.yml	Set up SELinux to allow the necessary connections to your NGINX setup
template.yml	NGINX config template variables
upload.yml	NGINX config/HTML/SSL upload variables

Example Playbooks

Working functional playbook examples can be found in the molecule/ directory in the following files:

Name	Description
api/converge.yml	Configure the NGINX Plus API and live metrics dashboard
cleanup_config/converge.yml	Cleanup an NGINX config
complete/converge.yml	Test all NGINX directives are correctly templated
complete_plus/converge.yml	Test all NGINX Plus specific directives are correctly templated
default/converge.yml	Configure NGINX with a config as close as possible to the default config
push_config/converge.yml	Push a preexisting NGINX config from your system to your NGINX instance
reverse_proxy/converge.yml	Configure NGINX as a reverse proxy between two web servers
stub_status/converge.yml	Configure the NGINX Open Source stub status metrics
web_server/converge.yml	Configure NGINX as a web server

Note

If you install this repository via Ansible Galaxy, you will need to replace the include_role variable in the example playbooks from ansible-role-nginx-config to nginxinc.nginx_config.

Other NGINX Ansible Collections and Roles

You can find the Ansible NGINX Core collection of roles to install and configure NGINX Open Source, NGINX Plus, and NGINX App Protect here.

You can find the Ansible NGINX role to install NGINX OSS and NGINX Plus here.

You can find the Ansible NGINX App Protect role to install and configure NGINX App Protect WAF and NGINX App Protect DoS here.

You can find the Ansible NGINX Unit role to install NGINX Unit here.

License

Apache License, Version 2.0

Author Information

Alessandro Fael Garcia

© F5, Inc. 2020 - 2024