Ansible Playbooks for Beginners: Automate Your First Server Setup

Ansible is the most popular agentless automation tool for IT infrastructure. It works over SSH, requiring no software on target servers.

Installing Ansible

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y ansible
sudo dnf install -y ansible-core
ansible --version

Inventory Setup

[webservers]
web1 ansible_host=192.168.1.10
web2 ansible_host=192.168.1.11

[all:vars]
ansible_user=deploy

Your First Playbook

---
- name: Configure web servers
  hosts: webservers
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Install Nginx
      apt:
        name: nginx
        state: present
    - name: Start Nginx
      systemd:
        name: nginx
        state: started
        enabled: yes

Running Playbooks

ansible-playbook setup.yml --syntax-check
ansible-playbook setup.yml --check
ansible-playbook setup.yml

Using Roles

ansible-galaxy init roles/webserver

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