Separate Ansible Vaults For Different Environments?

Question

I am using Ansible to handle endpoint differences for different environments. This is done through the use of variables and the ansible-xml extension.

For example, I have a task called "endpoints.yml" setup within a role called "myapp". This task sets a variety of configuration parameters within configuration files, substituting in variables.

/roles/myapp/tasks/endpoints.yml

 —> set value in app config file to: {{ db_user }}
 —> set value in app config file to: {{ db_password }}

Since my non-prod environments share a single endpoint, the values for these variables are setup in the role's default file:

/roles/myapp/defaults/main.yml

 —> db_user: myuser_ro
 —> db_passwordd: some_password

For the prod environment, I am overwriting the default with a group_variable (since this takes precedence):

/environments/prod/group_vars/myapp_servers

 —> db_user: produser_ro
 —> db_password: some_other_password

This all works great and allows for us to use a single playbook/role for all environments. However, I am wanting to move take advantage of ansible-vault to move the password values out of these files and into an encrypted file.

However, there will still be different values for prod and non-prod. I could create a new "vars" file in the role called "pass.yml", encrypt it with ansible-vault, and then reference it from the task with an "include_vars: pass.yml".

But this doesn't explain how I account for needing different (encrypted) variables for different environments.

Any suggestions?

I suppose the best solution might be to have multiple vaults and reference them with --vault-password-file when calling ansible playbook: (ie: myapp_prod_vault.yml, myapp_nonprod_vault.yml) — mcdowellstl
Wait, why can't you use group_vars and have separate vault files for each group? Your question is rather confusing, hard to understand what exactly you are trying to explain. — Mxx

augurar augurar · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-23T18:49:59

It sounds like you are using a multi-environment structure like this. In this case you can create a vault file for each environment.

environments
├── dev
│   └── group_vars
│       └── all
│           └── secrets
└── prod
    └── group_vars
        └── all
            └── secrets

Each "secrets" file can have its own password.

Separate Ansible Vaults For Different Environments?

3 Answers