Ansible conditionals are similar to conditional statements in programming languages. In Chapter 1, Review of TCP/IP Protocol Suite and Python, we saw that Python uses conditional statements to only execute a section of the code using if.. then or while statements. In Ansible, it uses conditional keywords to only run a task when the condition is met. In many cases, the execution of a play or task may depend on the value of a fact, variable, or the previous task result. For example, if you have a play to upgrading router images, you want to include a step to make sure the new router image is on the device before you move on to the next play of rebooting the router.
In this section, we will discuss the when clause, which is supported for all modules, as well as unique conditional states that are supported in Ansible networking command modules. Some of the conditions...
