Summary

Since the last release of this book, there have been many changes to Ansible, but the most notable (which is expected to impact everyone reading this book) is the introduction of collections to manage modules, roles, plugins, and more, and decoupling them from the core release of Ansible. Probably the most noticeable change to Ansible code is in the introduction of FQCNs and the need to install collections if they are not part of the Ansible 4.3 package.

In this chapter, you learned about the reasons for the introduction of collections in Ansible, and how they impact everything from your playbook code to the way you install, maintain, and upgrade Ansible itself. You learned that collections are easy to build from scratch, and even how to build your own, before looking at ways to install and manage collections for your playbook. Finally, you learned the fundamentals of porting your Ansible code from earlier releases.

In the next chapter, you will learn how to secure secret...