Explain the Playbooks and How it works in Ansible

Playbooks

Each playbook is composed of one or more ‘modules’ in a list

Playbooks are divided into many sections like….
• Target Section – Defines the hosts against which playbooks tasks has to be
executed
• Variable Section – Defines variables
• Tasks Section – List of all modules that we need to run, in an order

Our First Playbook

• All sections begin with “-” & its attributes & parameters beneath it
• Indentation is imp, use only spaces & not tabs
• Create a folder(playbooks) & go inside that(vi test.yml)
• test.yml

--- # My First YAML playbook
- hosts: demo
tasks:
- name: Install httpd on server
action: yum pkg=httpd state=installed

• Run ansible-playbook to call the playbook

ansible-playbook test.yml

Target Section

• Create a file (vi first.yml)

Example:
--- # My First YAML playbook
- hosts: demo
user: ansible
become: yes # yes or no
connection: ssh # ssh or paramico
gather_facts: yes # yes or no

• Run ansible-playbook to call the playbook

ansible-playbook first.yml 

Task Section

Example:
--- # My First YAML playbook
- hosts: demo
user: ansible
become: yes
connection: ssh
tasks:
- name: Install HTTPD on centos 7
action: yum name=httpd state=installed
- name: Install MYSQL on centos 7
action: yum name=mysql state=installed

• Run ansible-playbook to call the playbook

ansible-playbook first.yml
(Remove httpd package)

Variables: Inclusion Types

• Create a section called vars within a playbook
• Put vars above tasks so that we define it first & use it later

--- # My First YAML playbook
- hosts: demo
user: ansible
become: yes
connection: ssh
vars:
pkgname: httpd
tasks:
- name: Install HTTPD server on centos 7
action: yum name=‘{{pkgname}}’ state=installed
(remove httpd package)

Handler Section

• Consists the ability to notify when something happens
• Also call another set of tasks
(Remove apache from node)

 Example

--- # My First YAML playbook
- hosts: demo
user: ansible
become: yes
connection: ssh
tasks:
- name: Install HTTPD server on centos 7
action: yum name=httpd state=installed
notify: restart HTTPD #is called only if the action is ran & successful #
handlers:
- name: restart HTTPD #has to match the notify name. Otherwise throws error #
action: service name=httpd state=restarted
(Install httpd in both nodes & don’t start service. Then try running above script. It won’t start service)

• Run ansible-playbook to call the playbook

ansible-playbook first.yml 
(Remove httpd from node)

Dry Run

• Check whether the playbook is formatted correctly
• Test how the playbook is going to behave without running the
tasks

ansible-playbook webserver.yml --check

Loops

• Often you’ll want to do many things in one task, such as create a lot of users, install a lot of
packages, or repeat a polling step until a certain result is reached

• Example

--- # Loop Playbook
- hosts: demo
user: ansible
become: yes
connection: ssh
tasks:
- name: add a list of users
user: name='{{ item }}' state=present
with_items:
- Raj
- Sai
- Hari

Conditionals

• Few tasks might be needed to execute only on specific scenario

• When statement
Sometimes you will want to skip a particular step on a particular host

• Example 1

--- # When playbook example
- hosts: demo
user: ansible
become: yes
connection: ssh
tasks:
- name: Install apache for debian
command: apt-get -y install apache2
when: ansible_os_family == "Debian"
- name: Install apache for redhat
command: yum -y install httpd
when: ansible_os_family == "RedHat“

cat /etc/os-rele*

Vault

• Ansible allows keeping sensitive data such as passwords or keys in encrypted files, rather
than as plaintext in your playbooks

• Creating a new Encrypted playbook (Put —) (Verify file permissions) (Open playbook now)

ansible-vault create playbook.yml

• Edit the Encrypted playbook

ansible-vault edit playbook.yml

• Change the password

ansible-vault rekey playbook.yml

• Decrypt the playbook & verify by opening playbook

ansible-vault decrypt playbook.yml

• Encrypt an existing playbook (verify by opening playbook)

ansible-vault encrypt playbook.yml

Roles (Theory)

• Adding more & more functionality to the playbooks will make it difficult to maintain in a
single file
• We can organize playbooks into a directory structure called roles

• Creating Role Framework (eg: playbook/roles/webserver)

/master.yml

playbook/roles/webserver/tasks/main.yml
/vars/main.yml
/handlers/main.yml

Roles (Lab)

• master.yml (master.yml & roles folder must be in same directory level)
• vi roles/webserver/tasks/main.yml

- name: Install Apache on CentOS
yum: pkg=httpd state=latest

playbook/roles/webserver/tasks/main.yml

/master.yml
/ansible-playbook master.yml (command run place)

• This is how we mention Role in play-books

 Example
 Create master.yml (inside playbook folder)

--- # master playbook for web servers
- hosts: all
user: ansible
become: yes
connection: ssh
roles:
- webserver

ansible-playbook master.yml (run being present in playbook folder)

easy_install pip
pip install ansible
ansible --version
ansible demo –b –m file -a “name=myfile state=touch”

yum update –y (Take RHEL machine)
rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
yum install ansible –y
ansibel --version

sudo rpm -ivh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
yum install ansible –y
ansible –version