Managing Ansible Deployments with Octopus

Matthew Casperson's blog post from July 11, 2017, outlines a method for deploying infrastructure using Ansible scripts managed by Octopus Deploy, particularly focusing on creating instances in AWS. By integrating Ansible with Octopus, users can treat infrastructure deployments with the same rigor and tracking as application code, allowing for progression through different environments, auditing deployments, and reverting to previous states with ease. The process involves setting up an initial Linux instance to run Ansible scripts, which are not natively supported on Windows control machines, and creating an IAM role with necessary permissions for EC2 operations. The guide walks through the creation and configuration of both Linux and Windows EC2 instances, illustrating the use of Ansible for automation and detailing the setup of the necessary AWS resources and Octopus configuration. It concludes by demonstrating how to package and deploy the Ansible scripts via Octopus, showcasing the advantages of managing infrastructure as code and leveraging Octopus's management features.