Configuring Docker using Ansible

4 min readJan 24, 2021

What is Docker?

Docker is a tool designed to make it easier to create, deploy, and run applications by using containers. Containers allow a developer to package up an application with all of the parts it needs, such as libraries and other dependencies, and deploy it as one package.

What is Ansible ?

Ansible is an open source automation platform. It is very, very simple to set up and yet powerful. Ansible can help you with configuration management, application deployment, task automation.

So, Let’s Get started with our task.

Task Description

🔅 Configure Docker through ansible.
🔅 Start and enable Docker services.
🔅 Pull the httpd server image from the Docker Hub
🔅 Run the httpd container and expose it to the public
🔅 Copy the html code in /var/www/html directory and start the webserver.

Firstly you have to update our inventory. Inventory is a file in which we specify all the IP addresses of the nodes to be managed.

Let’s ping and check the connectivity.

Now, let’s start doing our task.

In First Step we will create a repo and configure yum. To download Docker we will specify the baseurl.

Code to do the same:

- name:
  hosts: all
  tasks: 
   - name: Docker Repo
     yum_repository:
        name: docker_repo
        description: Repo for Docker 
        baseurl: https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/7/x86_64/stable
        gpgcheck: false

After configuring yum now we will download the Docker community in the managed node.

Code to download the Docker CE version.

- name: docker installation
  package: 
     name: "docker-ce-18.09.1-3.el7.x86_64"
     state: present

Here we have specified the version of docker to be downloaded.

In SECOND STEP we will start the docker services.

- name: Start docker
  service:
     name: "docker"
     state: started
     enabled: yes

To use ANSIBLE DOCKER MODULE we need docker sdk. To download the same

- name: docker sdk
  command: pip3 install docker

We have installed and started our docker service in the managed node.

Now, In the next step, we will configure the webserver. To do this we first need to pull the httpd image from the docker hub. To do this we will use the below code

- name: pull image
  docker_image: 
     name: httpd
     source: pull

This block of code will pull the httpd image. Now, we will copy the website from the controller node to managed node.

- name: copy
  copy: 
    dest: "/var/www/html/"
    src: Nitya.html

Nitya.html is the basic Html File I have created in the same folder where this playbook resides.

Now, we will launch a Container and expose the same container to the public so that data inside that can be accessed.

To launch the container and for exposing it code is

- name: launch container
  docker_container: 
      name: httpd_webserver
      state: started
      exposed_ports: "80" 
      image: httpd
      ports: 8080:80 
      volumes: /var/www/html/:/usr/local/apache2/htdocs
      command: httpd -D FOREGROUND

Full PlayBook Code:

Now we have to just run the above playbook.

Command to run the Playbook: