Setting up nginx web server

Setting up nginx is as simple as sudo apt-get install nginx, but configuring for our use case and managing the configuration's automated way is where Ansible gives the power. Let's look at the following snippet of nginx's role from the playbook:

- name: adding nginx signing key
  apt_key:
    url: http://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
    state: present

- name: adding sources.list deb url for nginx
  lineinfile:
    dest: /etc/apt/sources.list
    line: "deb http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/ubuntu/ trusty nginx"

- name: update the cache and install nginx server
  apt:
    name: nginx
    update_cache: yes
    state: present

- name: updating customized templates for nginx configuration
  template:
    src: "{{ item.src }}"
    dest: "{{ item.dst }}"

  with_items:
    - { src: "templates/defautlt.conf.j2", dst: "/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf" }    
  
  notify
    - start nginx
    - startup nginx

In the preceding code snippet, we are adding the signing key, then adding the repository, then installing. This ensures that we can also perform integrity checks while downloading packages from the repositories. 

Then, we are using Jinja2 templating to perform the configuration changes, which can be predefined in our configuration before updating in the server.