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 inventory


Ansible host management is simpler by far than all other configuration management and orchestration tools. It is basically a simple .ini file that contains a list of IP addresses, fully qualified hostnames, or short hostnames of the host clients. It also sometimes contains extra variables that define some aspects about the hosts. Generally, hosts are organized in groups with the name of the group put on top between two square brackets, such as [Group1].

Note

Adding a new host is as easy and simple as adding a new line to the host file, making sure it is in the right group and that it has the right variables needed to manage it.

In the default Ansible configuration file, the inventory file is located at /etc/ansible/hosts. It is an .ini file with simple text and a basic structure composed of sections, properties, and values. Being the default location, however, does not make it the best. In many cases, Ansible can be used by non-root users who do not have the privileges to...