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Web Server Load Balancing with NGINX Plus

Editor – The separate Ansible roles for NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus described in this post are deprecated by a unified Ansible role from NGINX, as announced in this blog post. The separate roles described here are no longer being maintained or updated.

For information about other DevOps automation tools for NGINX and NGINX Plus, check out these blog posts:

NGINX, Inc. has created Ansible roles for NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus, available on Ansible Galaxy.

A playbook is the Ansible automation engine for application deployment, enabling users to install and configure applications across multiple servers, environments, and operating systems, all from one central location. An Ansible role, in turn, bundles Ansible variables, tasks, and handlers into a clearly defined file structure. An Ansible role can be dropped into an Ansible playbook and immediately put to work.

You can find community‑developed roles at Ansible Galaxy, a free site for sharing, finding, and downloading roles. Downloading roles from Ansible Galaxy is a great way to jump‑start your automation projects.

Installing the NGINX roles from Ansible Galaxy is very simple. To install the NGINX Open Source role [Editor – now deprecated], run:

$ ansible-galaxy install nginxinc.nginx-oss

To install the NGINX Plus role [Editor – also now deprecated], run:

$ ansible-galaxy install nginxinc.nginx-plus

You can now deploy NGINX Open Source within a cloud provider with a simple Ansible playbook:

---
- hosts: localhost
  remote_user: root
  become: true
  roles:
    - role: ansible-nginx-oss     # Note: deprecated by ansible-role-nginx

You can also easily deploy NGINX Open Source to a dynamic inventory containing the NGINX tag:

--
- hosts: tag_nginx
  remote_user: root
  become: true
  roles:
    - role: ansible-nginx-oss     # Note: deprecated by ansible-role-nginx

Deploying NGINX Plus within a cloud provider additionally requires you to define the location of the certificate and key you received with your NGINX Plus license:

---
- hosts: localhost
  remote_user: root
  become: true
  roles:
    - role: ansible-nginx-plus    # Note: deprecated by ansible-role-nginx
  vars:
    - certs: ~/certs/

Similarly, specify the location of your NGINX Plus certificate and key when deploying NGINX Plus within a dynamic inventory containing the NGINX tag:

---
- hosts: tag_nginx
  remote_user: root
  become: true
  roles:
    - role: ansible-nginx-plus    # Note: deprecated by ansible-role-nginx
  vars:
    - certs: ~/certs/

For more details, visit the Ansible Galaxy page.

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About The Author

Alessandro Fael Garcia

Alessandro Fael Garcia

Technical Marketing Engineer

About F5 NGINX

F5, Inc. is the company behind NGINX, the popular open source project. We offer a suite of technologies for developing and delivering modern applications. Together with F5, our combined solution bridges the gap between NetOps and DevOps, with multi-cloud application services that span from code to customer.

Learn more at nginx.com or join the conversation by following @nginx on Twitter.