Book Image

Implementing DevOps with Ansible 2

By : Jonathan McAllister
Book Image

Implementing DevOps with Ansible 2

By: Jonathan McAllister

Overview of this book

Thinking about adapting the DevOps culture for your organization using a very simple, yet powerful automation tool, Ansible 2? Then this book is for you! In this book, you will start with the role of Ansible in the DevOps module, which covers fundamental DevOps practices and how Ansible is leveraged by DevOps organizations to implement consistent and simplified configuration management and deployment. You will then move on to the next module, Ansible with DevOps, where you will understand Ansible fundamentals and how Ansible Playbooks can be used for simple configuration management and deployment tasks. After simpler tasks, you will move on to the third module, Ansible Syntax and Playbook Development, where you will learn advanced configuration management implementations, and use Ansible Vault to secure top-secret information in your organization. In this module, you will also learn about popular DevOps tools and the support that Ansible provides for them (MYSQL, NGINX, APACHE and so on). The last module, Scaling Ansible for the enterprise, is where you will integrate Ansible with CI and CD solutions and provision Docker containers using Ansible. By the end of the book you will have learned to use Ansible to leverage your DevOps tasks.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Ansible Playbook Constructs


The Ansible playbook is at the heart of the Ansible Configuration Management and Automation System. Each playbook is made up of one or more plays. The concept of a playbook was derived from sporting references, where a coach would create a set of plays off the field and execute them during a game. The creators of Ansible leveraged this idea to create and successfully deliver an easy-to-use automation and Configuration Management solution. Playbook's are developed using YAML (more about this in the next section), and optionally Jinja2 for more comprehensive automation implementations.

Ansible playbook comprise a few specific structural and formatting elements, namely the following:

  • YAML syntax (the language Ansible leverages for automation)
  • Jinja2 (optional)
  • The hosts section (which defines the host groups to target during execution)
  • One or many configuration overrides (this section allows playbook developers to override configuration options or set specific playbook...