QuickstartΒΆ

If we have Ansible 2.9 or newer installed, we can download and install the NGINX Unit Ansible Collection with just one command:

$ ansible-galaxy collection install steampunk.unit

With the collection in place, we are just one Ansible playbook away from deploying a minimalistic python application:

---
- name: Install and run NGINX Unit
  hosts: unit_hosts
  become: true

  tasks:
    - name: Install Unit
      include_role:
        name: steampunk.unit.install

    - name: Create a directory for our application
      file:
        path: /var/www
        state: directory

    - name: Copy application
      copy:
        src: files/wsgi.py
        dest: /var/www/wsgi.py
        mode: "644"

    - name: Add application config to Unit
      steampunk.unit.python_app:
        name: sample
        module: wsgi
        path: /var/www

    - name: Expose application via port 3000
      steampunk.unit.listener:
        pattern: "*:3000"
        pass: applications/sample

When we run it, Ansible will:

  1. install and run the Unit server,

  2. copy our python application to the remote host, and

  3. instruct Unit to start passing the requests on port 3000 to our application.

Now, before we can run this playbook, we need to prepare an inventory file. The inventory should contain an unit_hosts group becuse our playbook expects to find target hosts there. A minimal inventory with a singlehosts will look somewhat like this:

all:
  children:
    unit_hosts:
      hosts:
        192.168.50.4:

Replace the IP addresses with your own and make sure you can ssh into the host. If you need help with building your inventory file, consult official documentation on inventory.

All that we need to do now is to run the playbook:

$ ansible-playbook -i inventory.yaml playbook.yaml

And in a minute or so, things should be ready to go. And if we now visit http://192.168.50.4:3000 (replace that IP address with the address of your backend), we should be greeted by our application. If no firewall is in a way, of cource ;)