How to Deploy a Web App Using Ansible in 10 Minutes

💡 What is Ansible?

Ansible is a powerful automation tool used for:

✔ Server configuration

✔ Application deployment

✔ Orchestration

✔ Multi-server management

It works over SSH, requires no agent, and uses YAML playbooks to automate tasks.

Ansible is extremely popular in DevOps because of its simplicity and agentless architecture.

In this guide, you will learn:

How to install Ansible

How to set up a project structure

How to create inventory files

How to write playbooks

How to deploy a web page using Ansible

Step 1: Install Ansible on Ubuntu

sudo apt update

sudo apt install ansible -y

ansible --version

Step 2: Create Ansible Project Structure

Create project folder:

mkdir ansible_demo

cd ansible_demo

Create inventory & playbooks directories:

mkdir inventory playbooks

Create inventory file:

cd inventory

touch hosts.ini

Create playbook file:

cd ../playbooks

touch web_prac.yml

Step 3: Add SSH Key to the Project

In the project root directory:

cd ..

mkdir ssh

cd ssh

touch nagios.pem

Paste your PEM key content into nagios.pem.

Then assign secure permissions:

chmod 600 nagios.pem

Step 4: Test SSH Connection with PEM

ssh -i ssh/nagios.pem ubuntu@ip_address_of_any_instance

If you successfully log in → connection OK.

Step 5: Create Files Folder for Static Content

This is used when deploying frontend assets (like index.html):

cd ../playbooks

mkdir files

cd files

touch index.html

You can add your HTML content inside index.html.

Step 6: Sample Playbook (web_prac.yml)

Inside ansible_demo/playbooks/web_prac.yml

---

- name: Setup Web Server

  hosts: webserver

  become: yes



  tasks:



    - name: Install NGINX

      apt:

        name: nginx

        state: present

        update_cache: yes



    - name: Copy index.html to web server

      copy:

        src: files/index.html

        dest: /var/www/html/index.html

        owner: www-data

        group: www-data

        mode: '0644'



    - name: Start and enable NGINX

      service:

        name: nginx

        state: started

        enabled: yes

Step 7: Inventory File — hosts.ini

Inside ansible_demo/inventory/hosts.ini

[webserver]

13.201.29.244 



ansible_user=ubuntu 

ansible_ssh_private_key_file=../ssh/nagios.pem

Step 8: Run the Ansible Playbook

From the ansible_demo directory:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts.ini playbooks/web_prac.yml

If successful →

✔ NGINX installed

✔ index.html deployed

✔ Web server active

Step 9: Verify on Browser

Open:

http://ip_address_of_instance

You should see your index.html content served via NGINX.

🎉 Final Result

By the end of this guide, you have:

• Installed Ansible


• Created a professional project structure


• Created an inventory file


• Created a YAML playbook


• Added SSH key for authentication


• Automated deployment of a web page