Summary

In this chapter, we've discussed Ansible and its core functionalities from a hands-on perspective. We began by understanding Configuration as Code, looked at Ansible and Ansible architecture, installed Ansible, understood Ansible modules, tasks, and playbooks, and then applied our first Ansible configuration. We then looked at fostering reusability with Ansible variables, Jinja2 templates, and roles, and then reorganized our configuration with reusability in mind. We also looked at several best practices along the way.

In the next chapter, we will combine Terraform with Ansible to spin up something useful and look at HashiCorp's Packer to create immutable infrastructure.