2025-09-26 –, A202
Managing infrastructure efficiently is critical, but many automation tools feel disconnected. In this hands-on tutorial, attendees will learn how to combine Terraform, Ansible, and Salt to fully automate the provisioning, configuration, and long-term management of infrastructure—all from a FreeBSD workstation.
We will walk through:
- Terraform: Defining infrastructure as code to provision FreeBSD EC2 instances.
- Ansible: Initial configuration of servers, including network setup and package installation.
- Salt: Ongoing configuration management, patching, and long-term server maintenance.
By the end of this tutorial, attendees will have a working hybrid infrastructure using FreeBSD locally and in AWS. They will leave with practical skills to automate and maintain infrastructure efficiently using BSD-friendly tools.
Intended Audience
System administrators, DevOps engineers, and developers using FreeBSD.
Anyone interested in automating infrastructure with open-source tools.
Attendees should have basic FreeBSD and shell scripting knowledge,
but no prior Terraform, Ansible, or Salt experience is required.
Expected Duration
3 hours (Hands-on, with live demonstrations).
Outline
1. Introduction (30 min)
Overview of Terraform, Ansible, and Salt
Why use all three together?
-
Setting Up FreeBSD Infrastructure with Terraform (55 min)
Writing Terraform to deploy FreeBSD EC2 instances
Managing networking and security groups -
Configuring FreeBSD with Ansible (55 min)
Installing software
Setting up IPSec VPN for secure remote management
Configuring a Lab Environment using FreeBSD Jails -
Maintaining FreeBSD with Salt (55 min)
Automating updates and configuration changes
Enforcing security policies -
Q&A and Wrap-Up (15 min)
What Attendees Will LearnHow to provision FreeBSD servers in AWS using Terraform.
How to use Ansible for initial setup and configuration.
How to use Ansible to setup a FreeBSD Jail lab environment.
How to maintain and scale FreeBSD infrastructure with Salt.
Requirements
Laptop with SSH access
FreeBSD workstation recommended, but not required, Hypervisor works (VirtualBox, etc)
Some prior BSD experience (but no automation expertise needed)
ROLLER ANGEL spends most of his time helping people learn how to accomplish their goals using technology. He’s an avid FreeBSD Systems Administrator and Pythonista who enjoys learning amazing things that can be done with Open Source technology — especially FreeBSD and Python — to solve issues. He’s a firm believer that people can learn anything they wish to set their minds to. Roller is always seeking creative solutions to problems and enjoys a good challenge. He’s driven and motivated to learn, explore new ideas, and to keep his skills sharp. He enjoys participating in the research community and sharing his ideas.