Now things are starting to get interesting. Using Ansible playbooks, we will be able to achieve configuration management, orchestration, provisioning, and deployment. Playbook scripting uses the Ansible ad hoc commands in a more organized way, similar to the way in which shell scripting arranges shell commands to execute a task on a system, but more advanced than that. Ansible playbooks can set up and configure complex environments on bare metal, virtually, or on the cloud. It can sequence multi-tier machine roll-outs; apply systems, devices, and application patches and fixes; gather data from hosts or monitoring services; and act accordingly to send immediate actions to servers, network devices, and load balancers. All of these tasks can be delegated to other servers.

Playbooks are coded in a YAML data serialization format. This is a human-readable formatting, allowing the developer an easier sharing of their code and better organization as part of team projects. YAML is...