Basics

Play: List of tasks that are being executed against a host Playbook: List of plays executed Name: Name of the project Hosts: Tasks: What you need to accomplish Instruction Parameters: What tool you are going to use

Playbooks

Playbooks are files that lists the plays (tasks)

ansible-playbook my_playbook.yml

Example Playbook

---
  - name: Name of the play
    hosts:   # Group of hosts
    tasks:
      - name: Name of the tasks (install htop)
        apt:
          name: htop
          state: latest

Keywords

They are key-value pairs that changes the way task, play and other things to run.

become: true: Means become root when you are running this task when: ansible_facts.services[‘nginx.service’].state == ‘running’ → Only run when this state is True gather_facts: yes → Ansible will gather system info on hosts you are working with

Installation

• RedHat: sudo dnf install epel-release && sudo dnf install ansible

Location: /etc/ansible

Hosts File

In hosts file, you can add hosts like this:

[db_servers]
server1
192.168.10.20

[db_servers:vars]
ansible_user=admin
ansible_password=MyPassword

This creates a group ‘db_servers’ and defines user-password to them

Basic Commands

• ansile db_servers -m ping → -m means module
• ansible db_servers -a "reboot" - > specify group and push ad-hoc command