RUNNING FLASK WEB SERVER ON VIRTUALBOX USING ANSIBLE AND VAGRANT

Vagrant is a tool that allows the application run independently of the platform. Vagrant does this with tools that include virtualization technology such as VirtualBox and WMware. There are a wide range of use cases, but we will use VirtualBox as a provider in our example here. As a DevOps Engineer, we can easily run it with Dockerized structures in a way that is platform-independent, but today we will do it with Vagrant.

With Vagrant, we can create our own environment independently of Ansible, but we will create the necessary environment with Ansible for diversity. Of course, we’ll do it to show off our DevOps skills.

Tools to be installed:

1) Vagrant( Here you can download the one that is suitable for your operating system. https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads )

After installation, check with vagrant — version.

2) Ansible ( Here you can download the one that is suitable for your operating system. https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/installation_guide/intro_installation.html )

After installation, check with ansible — version.

3) VirtualBox ( Here you can download the one that is suitable for your operating system. https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads )

Let’s start preparing.

1)First, we prepare the Vagrantfile necessary for the vagrant to work. Let’s create an empty folder and create the file in the terminal and run the vagrant init command. In this way, you will basically see the lines required to run vagrant and comments that show other features to use on it. Since our file content is already ready, let’s delete all the contents and paste the following lines into Vagrantfile.

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64" 
  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080
           
  config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.165.33.10"
  
  config.vm.define "trusty" do |node|    
    node.vm.hostname = "trusty.local"    
      node.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|        
        ansible.playbook = "main.yml"
    end
  end
config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
vb.memory = "512"
     vb.cpus = "1"
   end
config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL 
     apt-get update                          
  
   SHELL
end

2)Let’s prepare a simple Flask file called as test.py. Paste the following lines into it.

from flask import Flask
app=Flask(__name__)
@app.route("/")
def test():
    return ("CONGRATULATIONS. If you can see this page, it means that you have completed it successfully.")
if __name__=="__main__":
    app.run(host="0.0.0.0", port=80)

3)In the final stage, we create a playbook called main.yml, which will create the necessary environment. Paste the following lines into it.

---
- hosts: trusty
  gather_facts: no
  become: yes
  tasks:
  - name: Copy your flask app file to the Vagrant servers
    copy:
      src: /$PWD/test.py
      dest: /home/vagrant/test.py
  - name: installing pip3
    apt:
      name: python3-pip
      update_cache: yes
  - name: Installing flask module
    pip:
      executable: pip3
      name: flask
      state: latest
  - name: run flask app
    shell: |
      nohup python3 test.py > log.txt 2>&1 &

LAST STEP: We go to the Vagrantfile location in the terminal and run the vagrant up command.

After completing all steps, open any browser and type the private IP (192.168.33.10) to see the result.

If you want to connect to the machine at the terminal, run the vagrant ssh command. Run the exit command to exit again.

Run vagrant destroy to delete the machine.

This study is my first article on this platform. I hope it has been useful for you. Happy studying.

You can copy content from my GitHub account.

GitHub URL: https://github.com/mehmetakifdevops/medium