Now that Ansible is able to connect to your AWS environment, you can proceed with the actual playbook by following these steps:

1. Create the aws.yaml Playbook with the following content:

---
- hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - name: Ensure key pair is present
      ec2_key:
        name: fale
        key_material: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/fale.pub') }}"
    - name: Gather information of the EC2 VPC net in eu-west-1
      ec2_vpc_net_facts:
        region: eu-west-1
      register: aws_simple_net
    - name: Gather information of the EC2 VPC subnet in eu-west-1
      ec2_vpc_subnet_facts:
        region: eu-west-1
        filters:
          vpc-id: '{{ aws_simple_net.vpcs.0.id }}'
      register: aws_simple_subnet
    - name: Ensure wssg Security Group is present
      ec2_group:
        name: wssg
        description: Web Security Group
        region: eu-west-1
        vpc_id: '{{ aws_simple_net.vpcs.0.id }}'
        rules:
          - proto: tcp
            from_port: 22
            to_port: 22
            cidr_ip: 0.0.0.0/0
          - proto: tcp
            from_port: 80
            to_port: 80
            cidr_ip: 0.0.0.0/0
          - proto: tcp
            from_port: 443
            to_port: 443
            cidr_ip: 0.0.0.0/0
        rules_egress:
          - proto: all
            cidr_ip: 0.0.0.0/0
      register: aws_simple_wssg
    - name: Setup instance
      ec2:
        assign_public_ip: true
        image: ami-3548444c
        region: eu-west-1
        exact_count: 1
        key_name: fale
        count_tag:
          Name: ws01.ansible2cookbook.com
        instance_tags:
          Name: ws01.ansible2cookbook.coms
        instance_type: t2.micro
        group_id: '{{ aws_simple_wssg.group_id }}'
        vpc_subnet_id: '{{ aws_simple_subnet.subnets.0.id }}'
        volumes:
          - device_name: /dev/sda1
            volume_type: gp2
            volume_size: 10
            delete_on_termination: True

2. Run it using the following command:

$ ansible-playbook aws.yaml

This command will return something like the following:

PLAY [localhost] **********************************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [Ensure key pair is present] *****************************************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [Gather information of the EC2 VPC net in eu-west-1] *****************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [Gather information of the EC2 VPC subnet in eu-west-1] **************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [Ensure wssg Security Group is present] ******************************************************
ok: [localhost]

TASK [Setup instance] *****************************************************************************
changed: [localhost]

PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
localhost : ok=6 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 

If you check AWS Console, you will see that you now have one machine up and running!

To launch a virtual machine in AWS, we need a few things to be in place, as follows:

• An SSH key pair
• A network
• A subnetwork
• A security group

By default, a network and a subnetwork are already available in your accounts, but you need to retrieve their IDs.

That's why we started by uploading the public part of an SSH keypair to AWS, then queried for information about the network and the subnetwork, then ensured that the Security Group we wanted to use was present, and lastly triggered the machine build.

Now you have learned how to automate against Amazon Web Services, you'll learn how to complement Google Cloud Platform with automation.