Book Image

Ansible Quick Start Guide

By : Mohamed Alibi
Book Image

Ansible Quick Start Guide

By: Mohamed Alibi

Overview of this book

Configuration Management (CM) tools help administrators reduce their workload. Ansible is one of the best Configuration Management tools, and can act as an orchestrator for managing other CMs. This book is the easiest way to learn how to use Ansible as an orchestrator and a Configuration Management tool. With this book, you will learn how to control and monitor computer and network infrastructures of any size,physical or virtual. You will begin by learning about the Ansible client-server architecture. To get started, you will set up and configure an Ansible server. You will then go through the major features of Ansible: Playbook and Inventory. Then, we will look at Ansible systems and network modules. You will then use Ansible to enable infrastructure automated configuration management, followed by best practices for using Ansible roles and community modules. Finally, you will explore Ansible features such as Ansible Vault, Ansible Containers, and Ansible plugins.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Ansible Windows modules


Moving on from the Linux modules, let's now explore the modules that are used by Ansible to administrate Windows desktops and servers. Make sure to have already followed the preparation steps to ensure that the Windows hosts are ready to be controlled by Ansible.

Windows System Modules

Let's start by introducing the modules that control the Windows system and allow their users to manage its different aspects.

Windows user and group management module

These two modules are used to manage the users and groups of Windows hosts' local machines. The following playbook example shows how to add each mode to Windows hosts:

---
- name: Windows Module running
  hosts: winservers
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: create a new group dev
      win_group:
         name: developers
         description: Development department group
         state: present

    - name: create a new user in the dev group
      win_user:
         name: winuser1
         password: Ju5t@n0th3rP@55w0rd...