Some real-world examples

Before we finish the chapter and the book, I will give a few examples of how I have used and interacted with Ansible over the last few years.

Automating a complex deployment

In this example, an application was distributed across several dozen servers in a public cloud. Each application component was installed on at least three different hosts and required updates in a specific order.

The application developers collaborated with the operations team to streamline the deployment process to create an Ansible Playbook. The playbook automated the following steps for each component of the application:

1. Put the application into maintenance mode by connecting to the targeted hosts and executing a specific command.
2. Create snapshots of all the costs involved in the deployment, ensuring a rollback point if needed.
3. Initiate the deployment process by pulling the latest code from the designated GitHub repository and executing a series of commands to...