Recently I came across a requirement wherein we were supposed to do the end-to-end automation in the Azure virtual machine. The requirement was to:
- Install and configure Virtual Machine: Installing and configuring Virtual Machine, Open specific ports, and VM template.
- Install Mongo DB software and perform post-install configurations: Installing Mongo DB and then configure it based on standard best practices. Restore Mongo DB Data, create users and perform post-install configurations.
- Install Tomcat and carry out the application-specific configurations: Deploy Tomcat and configure manager and admin access. Perform application-specific post-install configurations.
- Install and configure application-specific configurations: Deploy application binaries, change application files as per software requirements like URL, etc.
Here is the step-by-step video demo and instructions.
1. Create a CentOS 8.X VM in Azure with a Static IP address
First, we need to create Azure VM and then install an Ansible controller on the newly built VM.

2. Execute pre-installation tasks on the VM.
We need to execute pre-installation steps so we can install ansible :
dnf update which python3 alternatives --set python /usr/bin/python3 python pip3 --version yum install python3-devel yum groupinstall 'development tools' pip3 install --upgrade pip pip3 --version
3. Installing Ansible on Virtual Machine for Azure Automation
We need to install ansible with PIp and when you use PIP for ansible installation you will not have the ansible.cfg file so you need to create this directory structure /etc/ansible/ and then copy the ansible.cfg from this link. https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/examples/ansible.cfg once the cfg file content is copied we need to change the deprecation_warnings = False.
pip3 install ansible[azure] ansible-galaxy collection install azure.azcollection ansible --version wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible-collections/azure/dev/requirements-azure.txt pip3 install -r requirements-azure.txt pip install msrestazure vi /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg #Update this value in the cfg file deprecation_warnings = False
4. Create Azure Credentials to login to Azure via Ansible
Ansible uses the Azure service principle to execute the commands on azure. So we need to execute these commands in azure-CLI (you can use Azure portal) to create the service principle.
Step1: az ad sp create-for-rbac –name ansible
The above command will provide the app ID put the appid in the following command and execute it
Step 2: az role assignment create –assignee <appID> –role Contributor
Step3: az account show –query ‘{tenantId:tenantId,subscriptionid:id}’;
Step4: Create Service principal secret as shown below:






Now populate the credential file with subscription, client_id, secret, and tenant info retrieved from the above sections. First, we need to create the azure directory in this path ~/.azure. then we need to create the credential file.
mkdir ~/.azure vi ~/.azure/credentials #Now copy these settings into the credentials file [default] subscription_id=<your-subscription_id> client_id=<security-principal-appid> secret=<security-principal-password> tenant=<security-principal-tenant>
5. Creating Ansible Automation Playbook
We have used ansible playbooks to create the Azure Virtual Machine with service principles. The entire code can be accessed from the GitHub repo: https://github.com/Live Network /dynamic-azure-automation
5.1 Deploy_vm_and_software Playbook.
This is the main playbook that creates the azure VM and imports other playbooks provided below. This is the main controller playbook. In this playbook, we have populated azure VM-specific variables and used them while creating the VM. We have used add host task in ansible to dynamically create the in-memory inventory since we do not know the IP address of the VM beforehand.
Once we have the IP address we can use that IP address to log in to the VM and deploy the software via roles. I have created two roles:
- MongoDB deployment role
- Tomcat deployment role
- name: Create Azure VM hosts: localhost vars: FinalUrl: :8080/ httpString: http:// teamsMsg: ipaddressToSend: teamsMsgToSend: resource_group: rg_az_dynamic_automation azure_location: eastus vnet_name: azure_vnet address_prefix: "10.0.0.0/16" subnet_prefix: "10.0.1.0/24" public_ip_name: vm_public_ip nsg_name: az_NSG nic_name: az_NIC vm_name: azautomationvm username: azureuser password: Welcome@123456 vm_offer_name: UbuntuServer vm_publisher_name: Canonical vm_sku_name: '18.04-LTS' size_of_vm: Standard_DS1_v2 connection: local tasks: - name: Create resource group azure_rm_resourcegroup: name: "{{resource_group}}" location: "{{azure_location}}" - name: Create virtual network azure_rm_virtualnetwork: resource_group: "{{resource_group}}" name: "{{vnet_name}}" address_prefixes: "{{address_prefix}}" - name: Add subnet azure_rm_subnet: resource_group: "{{resource_group}}" name: default address_prefix: "{{subnet_prefix}}" virtual_network: "{{vnet_name}}" - name: Create public IP address azure_rm_publicipaddress: resource_group: "{{resource_group}}" allocation_method: Static name: "{{public_ip_name}}" register: output_ip_address - name: Dump public IP for VM which will be created debug: msg: "The public IP is {{ output_ip_address.state.ip_address }}." - name: Create Network Security Group that allows SSH azure_rm_securitygroup: resource_group: "{{resource_group}}" name: "{{nsg_name}}" rules: - name: SSH protocol: Tcp destination_port_range: 22 access: Allow priority: 1001 direction: Inbound - name: allow-tomcat protocol: Tcp destination_port_range: 8080 access: Allow priority: 1002 direction: Inbound - name: allow-MongoDB protocol: Tcp destination_port_range: 27017 access: Allow priority: 1003 direction: Inbound - name: Create virtual network interface card azure_rm_networkinterface: resource_group: "{{resource_group}}" name: "{{nic_name}}" virtual_network: "{{vnet_name}}" subnet: default public_ip_name: "{{public_ip_name}}" security_group: "{{nsg_name}}" - name: Create VM azure_rm_virtualmachine: resource_group: "{{resource_group}}" name: "{{vm_name}}" vm_size: "{{size_of_vm}}" admin_username: "{{username}}" admin_password: "{{password}}" network_interfaces: "{{nic_name}}" image: offer: "{{vm_offer_name}}" publisher: "{{vm_publisher_name}}" sku: "{{vm_sku_name}}" version: latest - name: add host add_host: name: vmServer ansible_ssh_host: "{{output_ip_address.state.ip_address}}" groups: vm ansible_connection: ssh ansible_ssh_pass: Welcome@123456 - name: set teamsMsg set_fact: teamsMsg: "{{httpString + output_ip_address.state.ip_address + FinalUrl}}" - name: set ipaddressToSend set_fact: ipaddressToSend: "{{output_ip_address.state.ip_address}}" - name: Creating a vmtargetIPAddress.txt copy: dest: "/home/azureuser/vmtargetIPAddress.txt" content: | "{{ipaddressToSend}}" - name: Import install_softwares.yml playbook import_playbook: install_softwares.yml - name: Include WebHook playbook import_playbook: teams_webhooks.yml vars: teamsMsgToSend: "{{teamsMsg}}" - name: Import Delete IP address import_playbook: deleteIPaddress.yml
5.2 DeleteIPaddress Playbook
DeleteIP address playbook is used to delete the IP address file. While creating the VM we are storing the IP address of the newly created VM in the text file and later on we are using this IP address to send the messages to the Teams webhook. Once the playbook is executed we are deleting this file so that when the next time playbook runs it generates the new IP address instead of using the old IP address.
--- - name: Delete IP address file hosts: localhost tasks: - name: set address variable set_fact: address: "{{lookup('file', '/home/azureuser/vmtargetIPAddress.txt') }}" - name: update address variable set_fact: address: "{{address | replace('\"','') }}" - name: Display the Application URL debug: msg: " The sketch url is : http://{{address }}:8080" - name: delete IPAddress file file: path: /home/azureuser/vmtargetIPAddress.txt state: absent
5.3 Install_softwares playbook
Install_softwares playbook is used to deploy MongoDB and Tomcat via ansible roles. Ansible provides the prewritten roles in ansible-galaxy and you can use preexisting roles from ansible-galaxy.
I have created two ansible roles to deploy the software:
- MongoDB deployment role
- Tomcat deployment role
--- - name: install Mongo and Tomcat hosts: vm become: yes become_method: sudo # Set become method remote_user: azureuser # Update username for remote server vars: tomcat_ver: 9.0.30 # Tomcat version to install ui_manager_user: manager # User who can access the UI manager section only ui_manager_pass: Str0ngManagerP@ssw3rd # UI manager user password ui_admin_username: admin # User who can access bpth manager and admin UI sections ui_admin_pass: Str0ngAdminP@ssw3rd # UI admin password roles: - install_mongodb - install_tomcat
You can extend this code by adding your own software deployment logic.