Ansible Automation
Table of Contents
Overview
Automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment across multiple servers using Ansible playbooks, roles, and dynamic inventory management.
When to Use
- Configuration management
- Application deployment
- Infrastructure patching and updates
- Multi-server orchestration
- Cloud instance provisioning
- Container management
- Database administration
- Security compliance automation
Quick Start
Minimal working example:
# site.yml - Main playbook
---
- name: Deploy application stack
hosts: all
gather_facts: yes
serial: 1 # Rolling deployment
pre_tasks:
- name: Display host information
debug:
var: inventory_hostname
tags: [always]
roles:
- common
- docker
- application
post_tasks:
- name: Verify deployment
uri:
url: "http://{{ inventory_hostname }}:8080/health"
status_code: 200
retries: 3
delay: 10
// ... (see reference guides for full implementation)Reference Guides
Detailed implementations in the references/ directory:
| Guide | Contents |
|---|---|
| Playbook Structure and Best Practices | Playbook Structure and Best Practices |
| Inventory and Variables | Inventory and Variables |
| Ansible Deployment Script | Ansible Deployment Script |
| Configuration Template | Configuration Template |
Best Practices
✅ DO
- Use roles for modularity
- Implement proper error handling
- Use templates for configuration
- Leverage handlers for idempotency
- Use serial deployment for rolling updates
- Implement health checks
- Store inventory in version control
- Use vault for sensitive data
❌ DON'T
- Use command/shell without conditionals
- Copy files without templates
- Run without check mode first
- Mix environments in inventory
- Hardcode values
- Ignore error handling
- Use shell for simple tasks
