🖥️ VM Health Monitoring System with Ansible

📋 Project Overview

This project provides an automated solution for monitoring the health of AWS EC2 instances using Ansible. It collects various system metrics and sends detailed reports via email, helping system administrators keep track of their infrastructure's health status.

🏗️ Project Structure

Monitor_VM_Health/
├── ansible.cfg              # Ansible configuration file
├── playbook.yaml           # Main playbook that orchestrates the monitoring flow
├── collect_metrics.yaml    # Playbook for collecting VM metrics
├── send_report.yaml        # Playbook for generating and sending email reports
├── group_vars/
│   └── all.yaml           # Global variables configuration
├── inventory/
│   └── aws_ec2.yaml       # AWS EC2 dynamic inventory configuration
└── templates/
    └── report_email.html.j2 # Email report template in HTML format

🚀 Features

• 📊 Real-time system metrics collection
• 🔄 Dynamic AWS EC2 instance discovery
• 📧 Automated HTML email reports
• 📈 Performance monitoring and alerting
• 🎯 Customizable metrics and thresholds

Ansible Master EC2 Setup Guide

1. Connect to Ansible Master(EC2 instance) Node

Connect to the Ansible master node using SSH.

2. update and install ansible and AWS CLI on Master Node

# Update the system
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

# Add Ansible PPA (for latest versions)
sudo add-apt-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible

# Install Ansible
sudo apt install ansible -y

# Install AWS CLI
curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
sudo apt install unzip
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install
aws configure

3. Create the Access key from AWS account.

4. Rename EC2 Instances having tag (Environment:dev)

Create a script (rename_instances.sh) to automatically rename EC2 instances:

#!/bin/bash
# Fetch instance IDs that match Environment=dev and Role=web
instance_ids=$(aws ec2 describe-instances \
  --filters "Name=tag:Environment,Values=dev" "Name=instance-state-name,Values=running" \
  --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].InstanceId' \
  --output text)

# Sort instance IDs deterministically
sorted_ids=($(echo "$instance_ids" | tr '\t' '\n' | sort))

# Rename instances sequentially
counter=1
for id in "${sorted_ids[@]}"; do
  name="web-$(printf "%02d" $counter)"
  echo "Tagging $id as $name"
  aws ec2 create-tags --resources "$id" \
    --tags Key=Name,Value="$name"
  ((counter++))
done

5. Generate SSH Key Pair

# Create public and private key pair for connecting with managed nodes
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "Ansible-Master"

6. Create AWS EC2 Dynamic Inventory to fetching the managed node

Create a file at inventory/aws_ec2.yaml with the following content:

# Dynamic Inventory Configuration
plugin: amazon.aws.aws_ec2
regions:
  - ap-south-1
filters:
  tag:Environment: dev
  instance-state-name: running
compose:
  ansible_host: public_ip_address
keyed_groups:
  - key: tags.Name
    prefix: name
  - key: tags.Environment
    prefix: env

7. Create Virtual Python Environment

# Install venv module if not already present
sudo apt install python3-venv -y

# Create a virtual environment
python3 -m venv ansible-env

# Activate it
source ansible-env/bin/activate

8. Install Required Python Packages

# Install required Python packages
pip install boto3 botocore docker

9. Verify Dynamic Inventory

# Test the dynamic inventory configuration
ansible-inventory -i inventory/aws_ec2.yaml --graph

10. Configure Instance Access

Copy the private key of the instance inside the ansible-env directory:

# Create private key with same name and paste content
cp /path/to/your/private/key ansible-env/

give permission to file

sudo chmod +x mykey.pem

and execute the file

./mykey.pem

11. Automate SSH Key Distribution

Create a script (copy-public-key.sh) to distribute your SSH public key to all instances:

#!/bin/bash

# Define variables
PEM_FILE="mykey.pem"
PUB_KEY=$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)
USER="ubuntu"  # or ec2-user for Amazon Linux
INVENTORY_FILE="inventory/aws_ec2.yaml"

# Extract hostnames/IPs from dynamic inventory
HOSTS=$(ansible-inventory -i $INVENTORY_FILE --list | jq -r '._meta.hostvars | keys[]')

# Distribute SSH key to all hosts
for HOST in $HOSTS; do
  echo "Injecting key into $HOST"
  ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i $PEM_FILE $USER@$HOST "
    mkdir -p ~/.ssh && \
    echo \"$PUB_KEY\" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && \
    chmod 700 ~/.ssh && \
    chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  "
done

Make the script executable:

sudo chmod +x copy-public-key.sh

Note: This script automatically handles SSH host key checking, eliminating the need to manually respond to yes/no prompts for each instance. So we will disable this option or force to connect. By this script" [defaults] inventory = ./inventory/aws_ec2.yaml host_key_checking = False [ssh_connection] ssh_args = -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

12. setup the code directory and run the playbook

ansible-playbook playbook.yaml