In this video, we are going to talk about how we are going to design and set up our lab.
So let's talk about designing our lab first.
So if you are in corporate world, are you're working for any company, for example, ABC or XYZ company,
and you want to go through the automation through Ansible.
Then most likely you do have access to a server or a computer and it has Linux operating system running
on it.
All you have to do is install Ansible and then you also have other Linux servers or Windows Server for
that matter that you want to control and automate tasks onto those servers.
So you basically send the commands, the automation commands from Ansible to those clients, and that's
how it will work in a corporate world.
Now what if you have a home environment, in home environment or in your lab environment?
I would say you would have to find a computer.
A computer could be either desktop or laptop.
It has to have a Linux operating system running on it and we will install Ansible on top of the Linux
operating system.
By the way, if you do not have a Linux operating system directly running on that computer, it's fine.
I will show you in the next slide how are we going to go about installing Linux?
Then we have to make sure that computer, that Linux machine has required package, which is Python
three.
Again, we'll talk about that later.
If that computer is running windows or the virtual machine that we will be setting up on top of this
computer, if it has a windows running, then please note that ansible node or Ansible engine cannot
be installed on Windows Server.
All right, so once we have that Linux machine, then we installed Ansible and then we could execute
all the commands to our remote clients.
Moving on to the detailed design of our lab.
So we have two options here.
Option number one, we have to find a computer, a desktop or laptop.
And let's say if your laptop is running Mac OS or if it's running windows, that's perfectly fine.
All you have to make sure that it has Intel, Vertex or AMD 64 bit CPU.
The operating system which is running on your computer has to be a 64 bit operating system.
The computer has to have a eight gig, minimum eight gig of RAM, which is the memory.
It has to have 40 to 60 gig of free disk space.
Once you have that, that's the minimum requirement.
Then what we will do, we will install and virtualization software on top of that.
On that operating system, that virtualization software could either be Oracle VirtualBox or it could
be VMware Workstation Player.
Then we will create a virtual machine, a very first virtual machine on that virtualization software,
and then we will install Linux operating system.
That Linux operating system could either be Santas or Red Hat or a Bun two.
Ansible can be installed and can be run on any of these operating systems.
We will install operating Ansible Engine or Ansible software on these operating system.
And that virtual machine or that virtual computer will become our control node.
Any ansible engine which controls the remote clients or other clients is known as a control node.
Then we will create another virtual machine that would have either Linux or Windows, whichever computer
that you want to control.
So in our lab design or in this course, we will create one extra virtual machine which we will control
through a control node.
If you have enough resources, then I would say aside from client, one will create another client a
VM three running Linux as well and we will call it client two.
Now this is our option one.
What's the second option?
The second option is if you do not have the required resources or computer or a desktop in your home,
then you could actually utilize one of those cloud services such as AWS, Google Cloud.
Microsoft Azure create an account and most of.
These cloud services gives you free account and free access to create virtual machines.
In this example or in this option, you will create a VM one and then you will install Linux operating
system on it.
Again, it could be either Santos, RedHat or Ubuntu.
Then we will install Ansible on it and that becomes a control node.
Then we'll create VM two as our remote client, which we will be running or executing our commands through
control node in that VM too.
Of course we will install the Linux.
Same thing.
This is going to be cloud client one.
Same thing with VM three Linux and that becomes client two.
So that's our option too.
But in this entire course, we will go through option one and by the way, the VM one, that's where
we will install the Linux operating system.
And this entire course we will go through the sentence or send OS operating system installation and
and we will set our control node on that operating system and install the Ansible on it.