Skip to main content

Ansible

Deployment steps:​

Step 1: Install Ansible​

You can skip this step if you already have Ansible installed.

There are two options for installing Ansible:

  • Option 1: Using OS-specific Package Managers.

    • To install on Ubuntu, you can run the following commands:

      $ sudo apt update
      $ sudo apt install software-properties-common
      $ sudo add-apt-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible
      $ sudo apt install ansible

    • Please refer to Ansible's official installation guide for other operating systems.

  • Option 2: Using pip:

    $ sudo pip install ansible

Step 2: Ansible inventory setup​

  1. Clone the Appsmith repository to your machine & move it to the Ansible playbook folder.

    $ git clone https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmith.git
    $ cd ./appsmith/deploy/ansible/appsmith_playbook

  2. Create the inventory file.

        $ touch inventory

  3. To configure the inventory file, open it with your editor and add the hostname or FQDN of the server on which you want to deploy Appsmith, along with the Ansible port and Ansible user.

    The inventory file should follow the given format:

    appsmith ansible_host={{ SERVER_HOST }} ansible_port={{ SERVER_PORT }} ansible_user={{ SERVER_USER }}

    If you are using SSH key pairs for authenticating your SSH connections to your server. You can specify your ssh private key file in the inventory file using ansible_ssh_private_key_file

    appsmith ansible_host={{ SERVER_HOST }} ansible_port={{ SERVER_PORT }} ansible_user={{ SERVER_USER }} ansible_ssh_private_key_file={{ SSH_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE }}

Step 3: Ansible configuration vars setup for Appsmith​

  1. Open appsmith-vars.yml file with your editor.
    Some variables need input from you to start the application correctly.
    • install_dir: The absolute path of your app's installation folder on the server (required). Default value: ~/appsmith

Step 4: Run the Ansible playbook​

You can run the Ansible playbook with the following command:

$ ansible-playbook -i inventory appsmith-playbook.yml --extra-vars "@appsmith-vars.yml"

The command above uses the host information from the inventory file & feeds your configuration vars from appsmith-vars.yml before running the playbook

When it's all done, provided all went well and no parameters were changed, you should be able to visit your app on the browser using your custom_domain or by your SERVER_HOST (if you didn't provide value for custom_domain variable)

Note: You can put your inventory file in other folder and then specify its path with the -i flag, for more detail, please check Ansible Inventory documentation

Troubleshooting​

If you encounter any errors during this process, check out the guide on debugging deployment errors, if you are still facing an issue please reach out to support@appsmith.com