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Ansible NGINX Role

This role installs NGINX Open Source, NGINX Plus, or the NGINX Amplify agent on your target host.

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

Requirements

NGINX Plus (Optional)

If you wish to install NGINX Plus using this role, you will need to obtain an NGINX Plus license beforehand. You do not need to do anything beforehand if you want to install NGINX OSS.

Ansible

• This role is developed and tested with maintained versions of Ansible core (above 2.12).

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

  ---
  collections:
    - name: community.general
      version: 4.1.0
    - name: ansible.posix
      version: 1.3.0
    - name: community.docker  # Only required if you plan to use Molecule (see below)
      version: 2.0.2

  Note: You can alternatively install the Ansible community distribution (what is known as the "old" Ansible) if you don't want to manage individual collections.

• You will need to run this role as a root user using Ansible's become parameter. Make sure you have set up the appropriate permissions on your target hosts.

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

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 Ansible core installs Jinja2 by default, but depending on your install and/or upgrade path, you might be running an outdated version of Jinja2.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 2.11.
• Instructions on how to install Jinja2 can be found in the Jinja2 website.

Molecule (Optional)

• Molecule is used to test the various functionalities of the role. The recommended version of Molecule to test this role is 3.3.
• Instructions on how to install Molecule can be found in the Molecule website. You will also need to install the Molecule Docker driver.
• To run the NGINX Plus Molecule tests, you must copy your NGINX Plus license to the role's files/license folder.

You can alternatively add your NGINX Plus 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

Installation

Ansible Galaxy

Use ansible-galaxy install nginxinc.nginx to install the latest stable release of the role on your system. Alternatively, if you have already installed the role, use ansible-galaxy install -f nginxinc.nginx to update the role to the latest release.

Git

Use git clone https://github.com/nginxinc/ansible-role-nginx.git to pull the latest edge commit of the role from GitHub.

Platforms

The NGINX Ansible role supports all platforms supported by NGINX Open Source, NGINX Plus, and the NGINX Amplify agent:

NGINX Open Source

Alpine:
  - 3.12
  - 3.13
  - 3.14
  - 3.15
Amazon Linux:
  - 2
CentOS:
  - 7.4+
Debian:
  - buster (10)
  - bullseye (11)
Red Hat:
  - 7.4+
  - 8
SUSE/SLES:
  - 12
  - 15
Ubuntu:
  - bionic (18.04)
  - focal (20.04)
  - hirsute (21.04)

NGINX Plus

Alpine:
  - 3.11
  - 3.12
  - 3.13
  - 3.14
Amazon Linux 2:
  - any
CentOS:
  - 7.4+
Debian:
  - buster (10)
  - bullseye (11)
FreeBSD:
  - 12.1+
  - 13
Oracle Linux:
  - 7.4+
Red Hat:
  - 7.4+
  - 8
SUSE/SLES:
  - 12
  - 15
Ubuntu:
  - bionic (18.04)
  - focal (20.04)

NGINX Amplify Agent

Amazon Linux:
  - 2017.09
CentOS:
  - 7
Debian:
  - jessie
  - stretch
Red Hat:
  - 7
Ubuntu:
  - xenial
  - bionic
  - focal

Note: You can also use this role to compile NGINX Open Source from source, install NGINX Open Source on compatible yet unsupported platforms, or install NGINX Open Source on BSD systems at your own risk.

Role Variables

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

Name	Description
main.yml	NGINX installation variables
amplify.yml	NGINX Amplify agent installation variables
bsd.yml	BSD installation variables
logrotate.yml	Logrotate configuration variables
selinux.yml	SELinux configuration variables
systemd.yml	Systemd configuration variables

Similarly, descriptions and defaults for preset variables can be found in the vars/ folder in the following files:

Name	Description
main.yml	List of supported NGINX platforms, modules, and Linux installation variables

Example Playbooks

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

Name	Description
default/converge.yml	Install a specific version of NGINX and set up logrotate
module/converge.yml	Install various NGINX supported modules
plus/converge.yml	Install NGINX Plus and various NGINX Plus supported modules
source/converge.yml	Install NGINX from source

Do note that if you install this repository via Ansible Galaxy, you will have to replace the role variable in the sample playbooks from ansible-role-nginx to nginxinc.nginx.

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 configuration role to configure NGINX 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 Controller collection of roles to install and configure NGINX Controller 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

Grzegorz Dzien

Tom Gamull

© F5 Networks, Inc. 2018 - 2021