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Mastering Ansible, Second Edition
Mastering Ansible, Second Edition

Mastering Ansible, Second Edition: Master the ins and outs of advanced operations with Ansible , Second Edition

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Mastering Ansible, Second Edition

Chapter 2. Protecting Your Secrets with Ansible

Secrets are meant to stay secret. Whether they are login credentials to a cloud service or passwords to database resources, they are secret for a reason. Should they fall into the wrong hands, they can be used to discover trade secrets, customers' private data, create infrastructure for nefarious purposes, or worse. All of which could cost you or your organization a lot of time, money, and headache! In this chapter, we cover how to keep your secrets safe with Ansible:

  • Encrypting data at rest
  • Protecting secrets while operating

Encrypting data at rest

As a configuration management system or an orchestration engine, Ansible has great power. In order to wield that power, it is necessary to entrust secret data to Ansible. An automation system that prompts the operator for passwords each connection is not very efficient. To maximize the power of Ansible, secret data has to be written to a file that Ansible can read and utilize the data from within.

This creates a risk though! Your secrets are sitting there on your filesystem in plain text. This is a physical and digital risk. Physically, the computer could be taken from you and pawed through for secret data. Digitally, any malicious software that can break the boundaries set upon it could read any data your user account has access to. If you utilize a source control system, the infrastructure that houses the repository is just as much at risk.

Thankfully, Ansible provides a facility to protect your data at rest. That facility is Vault. This facility allows for encrypting...

Protecting secrets while operating

In the previous section of this chapter, we covered protecting your secrets at rest on the filesystem. However, that is not the only concern when operating Ansible with secrets. That secret data is going to be used in tasks as module arguments or loop inputs or any number of other things. This may cause the data to be transmitted to remote hosts, logged to local or remote log files, or displayed onscreen. This section of the chapter will discuss strategies for protecting your secrets during operation.

Secrets transmitted to remote hosts

As we learned in Chapter 1, System Architecture and Design of Ansible, Ansible will combine module code and arguments and write this out to a temporary directory on the remote host. This means your secret data is transferred over the wire AND written to the remote filesystem. Unless you are using a connection plugin other than ssh, the data over the wire is already encrypted preventing your secrets from being discovered...

Summary

Ansible can deal with sensitive data. It is important to understand how this data is stored at rest and how this data is treated when utilized. With a little care and attention, Ansible can keep your secrets secret. Encrypting secrets with ansible-vault can protect them while dormant on your filesystem or in a shared source control repository. Preventing Ansible from logging task data can protect against leaking data to remote log files or onscreen displays.

In our next chapter, we will explore the powers of the Jinja2 templating engine, as used by Ansible.

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Key benefits

  • Learn how to extend Ansible with custom modules, plugins, and inventory sources
  • Utilize advanced Ansible features to orchestrate rolling updates with little to no service disruptions
  • An up-to-date book that brings to light the newly added features in Ansible 2.x

Description

This book provides you with the knowledge you need to understand how Ansible 2.1 works at a fundamental level and leverage its advanced capabilities. You'll learn how to encrypt Ansible content at rest and decrypt data at runtime. You will master the advanced features and capabilities required to tackle the complex automation challenges of today and beyond. You will gain detailed knowledge of Ansible workflows, explore use cases for advanced features, craft well thought out orchestrations, troubleshoot unexpected behaviour, and extend Ansible through customizations. Finally, you will discover the methods used to examine and debug Ansible operations, helping you to understand and resolve issues. By the end of the book, the readers will be able to unlock the true power of the Ansible automation engine and will tackle complex real world actions with ease.

Who is this book for?

This book is for Ansible developers and operators who have an understanding of the core elements and applications but are now looking to enhance their skills in applying automation using Ansible.

What you will learn

  • Gain an in-depth understanding of how Ansible works under the covers
  • Fully automate the Ansible playbook executions with encrypted data
  • Access and manipulate variable data within playbooks
  • Use Blocks to construct failure recovery or cleanup
  • Explore the Playbook debugger and Ansible Console
  • Troubleshoot unexpected behavior effectively
  • Work with cloud infrastructure providers and container systems
  • Develop custom modules, plugins, and dynamic inventory sources
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Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Mar 30, 2017
Length: 310 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781787125681
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Red Hat
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Product Details

Publication date : Mar 30, 2017
Length: 310 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781787125681
Vendor :
Red Hat
Languages :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

9 Chapters
1. System Architecture and Design of Ansible Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Protecting Your Secrets with Ansible Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Unlocking the Power of Jinja2 Templates Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Controlling Task Conditions Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Composing Reusable Ansible Content with Roles Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Minimizing Downtime with Rolling Deployments Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Troubleshooting Ansible Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Extending Ansible Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Infrastructure Provisioning Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.8
(8 Ratings)
5 star 62.5%
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2 star 25%
1 star 12.5%
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Craigify Aug 19, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2
I tried to get into this book. I'm learning Ansible, but I'm having a difficult time following this book as a learning guide. I think reading the website docs is better, and will save you a purchase. At least the docs are logical, and walk you through step by step.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
John Doe Jun 15, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Good Ansible book for more advanced topics.
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Jayesh Jun 02, 2018
Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 1
This is not the best book to start with.This book assume that you have fair knowledge of ansible. Disappointed with this book.Please don't buy this book.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Jurijs Kolomijecs Feb 26, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Kurt Keller is probably right, the book might be difficult to read for a newbie, but hey, the book is called "Mastering Ansible", meaning you will become a master. It was a difficult trip to learn the content, since I tried to learn each and every feature Ansible provides. I already have ~80 hours experience with Ansible and the book was right for me. After reading a book I can massively refactor existing playbooks and make those way easier to read and execute properly. For example, now I know about "changed_when" feature, so I know when something was really changed.I would recommend this book to everybody who really wants to master Ansible and is ready to spend lots of time executing examples and adjusting existing playbooks.
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JimM Jan 25, 2018
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Well written and easy to use on kindle.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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