Updating a Drupal Website Using Ansible: a High-Level Overview
Ansible is an extremely powerful automation tool that can save the Drupal web developer a tremendous amount of time. It does this by automating time-consuming repetitive tasks like keeping Drupal up-to-date. This article is a high-level overview to help you understand how you can use Ansible to automate Drupal maintenance. This article isn't designed for you to just read once and fully understand: you'll need to practice the concepts espoused below to fully understand them.
Concept 1: We use Ansible to save time.
Updating a Drupal website manually can be time-consuming and prone to errors, especially if the site has many dependencies or needs frequent updates. Using Ansible, a powerful automation tool, you can streamline the update process to make it faster, more reliable, and scalable. Below is an overview of how you can automate Drupal updates with Ansible.
Key Steps in the Update Process:
1. Inventory Configuration (Concept 2)
Just like GNU/Linux, Ansible works using files to store important data. The inventory file stores which servers the Ansible playbook will do work on. You run the Ansible playbook on a host computer, and it follows the playbook's instructions on all of the computers in the associated inventory file. Let's look at the structure of an inventory file below.
- Define the target servers in your Ansible inventory file. For example:
[drupal_servers]
example.com ansible_host=192.168.1.100 ansible_user=your_user
- This allows Ansible to know which servers to target for the update tasks.
2. Backup the Website (Concept 3)
Backing up the Drupal website before running an Ansible playbook to update Drupal is a critical step. Imagine this terrifying scenario: you've built a Drupal website for a client who has a multi-million dollar business. You didn't back up the website before running your new Ansible playbook, and the playbook breaks the website. Now, your client can't serve their customers until you get the site back up again. Taking a few minutes to back up the website would have entirely prevented this problem.
- Before updating, back up both the Drupal database and files. This ensures you have a restore point if anything goes wrong.
- Database backups can be done using Drush:
drush sql-dump --result-file=/path/to/backup.sql
- Files can be backed up by copying the entire Drupal root directory:
cp -r /var/www/html/drupal /path/to/backup
3. Update Code with Composer (Concept 4)
Drupal has two powerful tools that you can leverage to do work on Drupal websites: Composer and Drush. Instead of logging into the Drupal website server and running Composer and Drush commands manually, we'll let our Ansible playbook log in to the server and run the Composer and Drush commands for us automatically.
- Use Composer to update Drupal core and contributed modules. This ensures you fetch the latest compatible versions of the codebase.
composer update @latest --with-dependencies
4. Apply Database Updates (Concept 5)
After the Ansible playbook does all of the updates, we want it to update the software database so it knows what has been updated.
- After updating the code, apply database schema updates using Drush:
drush updb -y
5. Rebuild Cache (Concept 6)
We want to make sure that all caches are cleared so that the website runs optimally using fresh data, not data from before the update.
- Clear Drupal's cache to make the changes take effect:
drush cr
6. Reset Permissions (Concept 7)
For Drupal to run properly, the Drupal executables must have the correct permissions set.
- Reset file and directory permissions to ensure proper functionality:
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/drupal
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/drupal
7. Verify the Update (Concept 8)
When we update Drupal, whether manually or automatically using an Ansible playbook, we want to verify that the update was properly completed.
- Perform a health check to verify that the website is functioning correctly. You can test HTTP responses or use Drush to check the site's status:
drush status
Automating the Process with Ansible (Concept 9)
Ansible can automate all the above steps with a playbook. A playbook is a YAML file that defines the sequence of tasks to execute on your server.
Example Playbook:
---
- name: Automate Drupal Update Process
hosts: drupal_servers
tasks:
- name: Backup Database
command: drush sql-dump --result-file=/backups/db-backup.sql
args:
chdir: /var/www/html/drupal
- name: Backup Files
copy:
src: /var/www/html/drupal
dest: /backups/drupal-files
remote_src: yes
- name: Update Drupal Code
shell: composer update @latest --with-dependencies
args:
chdir: /var/www/html/drupal
- name: Apply Database Updates
command: drush updb -y
args:
chdir: /var/www/html/drupal
- name: Clear Cache
command: drush cr
args:
chdir: /var/www/html/drupal
- name: Reset Permissions
file:
path: /var/www/html/drupal
owner: www-data
group: www-data
mode: "0755"
recurse: yes
- name: Verify Site Status
uri:
url: http://example.com
status_code: 200
Playbook Directory Structure: (Concept 10)
ansible/
├── inventory
├── playbooks/
│ └── update-drupal.yml
├── backups/
├── vars/
Running the Playbook (Concept 11)
To execute the playbook:
1. Ensure you have configured your inventory and playbook properly.
2. Run the following command:
ansible-playbook -i inventory playbooks/update-drupal.yml
Benefits of Using Ansible for Updates (Conceptual Recap)
- Consistency: Automates the process to ensure updates are applied uniformly across environments.
- Scalability: Allows updates to be performed on multiple servers simultaneously.
- Efficiency: Saves time by automating repetitive tasks.
- Safety: Ensures backups are created before updates, minimizing risk.
By using Ansible, you can simplify and secure the process of updating Drupal, ensuring your site stays up-to-date with minimal effort.