The Ghost Operator's Signal
Conditional statements allow you to control the task execution based on specific conditions, ensuring that your playbooks respond appropriately to varying scenarios. Loops are control structures that allow you to repeat tasks across multiple items, such as iterating through a list of packages or files.
Continue reading “Ansible Basics 06: Conditional Statements and Loops”
Ansible playbooks are the core components of Ansible. Playbooks are written in YAML format and describe a set of tasks that need to be executed on the managed systems. A playbook consists of one or more plays, and each play defines a set of tasks to be performed on a group of hosts. Tasks are the individual actions or commands that Ansible should execute, such as installing packages, copying files, or restarting services. Tasks call out to the programmed code units called modules.
Continue reading “Ansible Basics 05: Playbooks”
An Ansible inventory is a structured list of hosts or nodes that Ansible can manage, providing a foundation for orchestrating automation tasks across a network. This inventory file typically contains information about the hosts’ IP addresses, connection details, and grouping, allowing users to organize and categorize systems based on their roles, functions, or other criteria.
Continue reading “Ansible Basics 04: The Inventories”
Ansible consists of several key components that collectively build a robust automation and configuration management. Ad-hoc commands are the easiest and fastest way to run some commands remotely or on a host. You have to understand the basic terminology to do this, so here is a quick start, and later we are going to go into the details in the upcoming articles.
Continue reading “Ansible Basics 03: Running Ad-Hoc Commands”
Ansible can be installed on a large variety of systems, but most people and companies run it on Linux hosts. Small companies and startups (with only a few administrators) do not dedicate a server for it, rather they use the admin workstations or notebooks. When a company grows and more people work on the environment they dedicate a server to these operations, and Ansible can scale well. In this article we go through the different alternative methods to install Ansible.
Continue reading “Ansible Basics 02: Installing Ansible”
The Ansible Basics course is a new, free series from Tom’s IT Cafe for those who want to learn the foundations of automation, configuration management and infrastructure as code. The structure of the course is simple, starting with the installation of Ansible, through its configuration, to some examples of the usage. You have to understand some computer basics to fully understand this topic. This article series will not go into the details of networking, identity and access management nor security hardening. It will help you start working with Ansible, and initiate your automation journey. New articles on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5PM CET.
Continue reading “Ansible Basics 01: Automation, Configuration Management, Infrastructure as Code”Automation has become a cornerstone of modern IT operations, and Ansible stands as one of the most popular tools for configuration management, application deployment, and task automation. Ansible simplifies these processes through its role-based approach, making it easier to manage complex infrastructure and streamline workflows. In this blog post, we will explore how to create your own Ansible role using industry-standard tools and software. By the end, you’ll be well-equipped to design and share your own reusable Ansible roles.
In the fast-paced world of technology, efficiency and automation are key to staying competitive and managing resources effectively. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are no exception, and one powerful tool for automating IT operations is Ansible. We -at Tom’s IT Cafe- start a new series of blog posts where, we will guide you through the process of installing and getting started with Ansible in a small company to kickstart your automation journey.
Ansible is a powerful automation and configuration management tool widely used in the DevOps world. One of the recent additions to Ansible is Execution Environments, which simplifies the management of Ansible collections and dependencies. In this blog post, we will explore what Ansible Execution Environments are and provide a quick start guide to help you get started.
Ansible Vault is a feature of Ansible that allows you to encrypt sensitive data such as passwords or keys in encrypted files, rather than as plaintext in playbooks or roles. This provides the ability to secure any sensitive data that is necessary to successfully run Ansible projects. Ansible Vault uses the AES 256 algorithm to provide symmetric encryption, which means that it uses the same password for encrypting and decrypting files. The ansible-vault command is the main interface for managing encrypted content within Ansible, and it is used to initially encrypt files and subsequently used to view, edit, or decrypt the data. Ansible Vault is especially useful if you have confidential data that you want to secure and prevent from being publicly exposed.
Using SSH jump hosts (also known as bastion hosts or SSH gateways) with Ansible allows you to securely access and manage servers in a remote network or behind a firewall. Jump hosts act as intermediaries, forwarding your SSH connection to the target hosts. You can configure Ansible to use jump hosts for managing remote servers. Here’s how to set it up:
Testing Ansible roles is a crucial step in ensuring the reliability and correctness of your infrastructure automation. Among the various tools available for this purpose, Molecule stands out as a versatile framework for testing Ansible roles. When coupled with Podman, a containerization tool similar to Docker, it provides a seamless and efficient environment for testing Ansible roles on Debian Linux. In this blog post, we will explore the process of setting up Molecule with Podman on Debian Linux.
Ansible, a powerful open-source automation tool, simplifies the management of infrastructure, applications, and data across your IT environment. At the heart of Ansible’s magic lies SSH (Secure Shell) – the trusted protocol for secure remote access. Configuring SSH connections in Ansible is a fundamental step in reaching its capabilities for server provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment. In this guide, we will walk you through the process of setting up SSH connections in Ansible to help you automate your infrastructure efficiently and securely.
Ansible, an open-source automation tool, helps system administrators and DevOps teams to efficiently manage infrastructure and streamline complex tasks. One of Ansible’s powerful features is the use of templates, which allows for the dynamic generation of configuration files and other resources. Here we will go through a real-world network configuration of a small lab environment.
Ansible’s real strengths are the fast speed of learning the basics and its simplicity. We all keep some configuration in a GIT service like my dot config files in Github. It is very quick and easy to automate the check out of a repository, and to distribute files from it with the built in Ansible modules.
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