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:
yaml# 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
