Ansible Automation

Table of Contents

• Overview
• When to Use
• Quick Start
• Reference Guides
• Best Practices

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