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Practical Ansible
Practical Ansible

Practical Ansible: Learn how to automate infrastructure, manage configuration, and deploy applications , Second Edition

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Profile Icon James Freeman Profile Icon Daniel Oh Profile Icon Fabio Alessandro Locati
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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5 (3 Ratings)
Paperback Sep 2023 420 pages 2nd Edition
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Profile Icon James Freeman Profile Icon Daniel Oh Profile Icon Fabio Alessandro Locati
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Practical Ansible

Getting Started with Ansible

Ansible enables you to easily deploy applications and systems consistently and repeatably using native communication protocols such as SSH and WinRM. As a result, Ansible is agentless and so requires nothing to be installed on the managed systems (except for Python, which, these days, is present on most systems). As a result, it enables you to build a simple yet robust automation platform for your environment.

Ansible is straightforward to install and also comes packaged for many modern systems. Its architecture is serverless as well as agentless, so it has a minimal footprint. You can choose to run it from a central server or your own laptop—the choice is entirely yours. You can manage anything from a single host to hundreds of thousands of remote hosts from one Ansible control machine. All remote machines can be managed by Ansible, and with sufficient playbooks created, you may never have to log in to any of these machines individually again...

Technical requirements

Ansible has a fairly minimal set of system requirements—as such, you should find that if you have a machine (either a laptop, a server, or a virtual machine (VM)) that is capable of running Python, then you will be able to run Ansible on it. Later in this chapter, we will demonstrate the installation methods for Ansible on a variety of operating systems—it is hence left to you to decide which operating systems are right for you.

The one exception to the preceding statement is Microsoft Windows—although there are Python environments available for Windows, there is as yet no native build of Ansible for Windows. Readers running more recent versions of Windows will be able to install Ansible using Windows Subsystem for Linux (henceforth, WSL) by following the procedures outlined later for their chosen WSL environment (for example, if you install Ubuntu on WSL, you should simply follow the instructions given in this chapter for installing Ansible...

Installing and configuring Ansible

Ansible is written in Python and, as such, can be run on a wide range of systems. This includes the most popular flavors of Linux, FreeBSD, and macOS. The one exception to this is Windows, where though native Python distributions exist, there is as yet no native Ansible build. As a result, your best option at the time of writing is to install Ansible under WSL, proceeding as if you were running on a native Linux host.

Once you have established the system on which you wish to run Ansible, the installation process is normally simple. In the following sections, we will discuss how to install Ansible on a wide range of different systems so that most readers should be able to get up and running with Ansible in a matter of minutes.

Understanding Ansible version numbers

When the previous edition of this book was published, Ansible followed a relatively simple version numbering scheme. All releases of Ansible included all the modules, plugins, and...

Getting to know your Ansible installation

By this stage in this chapter, regardless of your choice of operating system for your Ansible control machine, you should have a working installation of Ansible with which to begin exploring the world of automation. In this section, we will carry out a practical exploration of the fundamentals of Ansible to help you to understand how to work with it. Once you have mastered these basic skills, you will then have the knowledge required to get the most out of the remainder of this book. Let’s get started with an overview of how Ansible connects to non-Windows hosts.

Understanding how Ansible connects to hosts

With the exception of Windows hosts (as discussed at the end of the previous section), Ansible uses the SSH protocol to communicate with hosts. The reasons for this choice in the Ansible design are many, not least that just about every Linux/FreeBSD/macOS host has it built in, as do many network devices such as switches and routers...

Managed node requirements

So far, we have focused almost exclusively on the requirements for the Ansible control host and have assumed that (except for the distribution of the SSH keys) the target hosts will just work. This, of course, is not always the case, and for example, while a modern installation of Linux installed from an ISO will often just work, cloud operating system images are often stripped down to keep them small, and so might lack important packages such as Python, without which Ansible cannot operate.

If your target hosts are lacking Python, it is usually easy to install it through your operating system’s package management system. Ansible requires you to install either Python version 2.7 or 3.5 (and above) on the Ansible-managed nodes but has more stringent requirements for the control node. At the time of writing, ansible-core 2.15 (which accompanies Ansible 8.0.0) requires a version of Python between 3.9 and 3.11 to be installed on the control node. This...

Summary

Ansible is a powerful and versatile yet simple automation tool, of which the key benefits are its agentless architecture and its simple installation process. Ansible was designed to get you from zero to automation rapidly and with minimal effort, and we have demonstrated the simplicity with which you can get up and running with Ansible in this chapter.

In this chapter, you learned the basics of setting up Ansible—how to install it to control other hosts, and the requirements for nodes being managed by Ansible. You learned about the fundamentals required to set up SSH and WinRM for Ansible automation, as well as how to bootstrap managed nodes to ensure they are suitable for Ansible automation. You also learned about ad hoc commands and their benefits. Finally, you learned how to run the latest version of the code directly from GitHub, which both enables you to contribute directly to the development of Ansible and gives you access to the very latest features should...

Questions

  1. On which operating systems can you set up an Ansible control node? (There are multiple correct answers.)
    1. Ubuntu 22.04
    2. Fedora 35
    3. Windows Server 2022
    4. HP-UX
    5. Mainframe
  2. Which protocol does Ansible use to connect to non-Windows managed nodes for running tasks?
    1. HTTP
    2. HTTPS
    3. SSH
    4. TCP
    5. UDP
  3. To execute a specific module in the Ansible ad hoc command line, you need to use the -m option.
    1. True
    2. False

Further reading

  • For any questions about installation via Ansible’s mailing list on Google Groups, refer to the following URL:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ansible-project

  • Information on how to install the latest version of pip can be found here:

https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installation/

  • Details of specific Windows modules using PowerShell can be found here:

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/windows/index.html

  • If you have a GitHub account and want to follow the GitHub project, you can keep tracking issues, bugs, and ideas for Ansible at the following URL:

https://github.com/ansible/ansible

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Key benefits

  • Orchestrate major cloud platforms such as OpenStack, AWS, and Azure
  • Use Ansible to automate network devices
  • Automate your containerized workload with Docker, Podman, or Kubernetes
  • Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Description

Ansible empowers you to automate a myriad of tasks, including software provisioning, configuration management, infrastructure deployment, and application rollouts. It can be used as a deployment tool as well as an orchestration tool. While Ansible provides simple yet powerful features to automate multi-layer environments using agentless communication, it can also solve other critical IT challenges, such as ensuring continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) with zero downtime. In this book, you'll work with the latest release of Ansible and learn how to solve complex issues quickly with the help of task-oriented scenarios. You'll start by installing and configuring Ansible on Linux and macOS to automate monotonous and repetitive IT tasks and learn concepts such as playbooks, inventories, and roles. As you progress, you'll gain insight into the YAML syntax and learn how to port between Ansible versions. Additionally, you'll understand how Ansible enables you to orchestrate multi-layer environments such as networks, containers, and the cloud. By the end of this Ansible book, you'll be well versed in writing playbooks and other related Ansible code to overcome all your IT challenges, from infrastructure-as-a-code provisioning to application deployments and handling mundane day-to-day maintenance tasks.

Who is this book for?

This book is for DevOps engineers, administrators, or any IT professionals looking to automate IT tasks using Ansible. Prior knowledge of Ansible is not a prerequisite.

What you will learn

  • Explore the fundamentals of the Ansible framework
  • Understand how collections enhance your automation efforts
  • Avoid common mistakes and pitfalls when writing automation code
  • Extend Ansible by developing your own modules and plugins
  • Contribute to the Ansible project by submitting your own code
  • Follow best practices for working with cloud environment inventories
  • Troubleshoot issues triggered during Ansible playbook runs
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Table of Contents

20 Chapters
Part 1:Learning the Fundamentals of Ansible Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 1: Getting Started with Ansible Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 2: Understanding the Fundamentals of Ansible Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 3: Defining Your Inventory Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 4: Playbooks and Roles Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Part 2:Expanding the Capabilities of Ansible Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 5: Creating and Consuming Modules Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 6: Creating and Consuming Collections Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 7: Creating and Consuming Plugins Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 8: Coding Best Practices Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 9: Advanced Ansible Topics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Part 3:Using Ansible in an Enterprise Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 10: Network Automation with Ansible Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 11: Container and Cloud Management Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 12: Troubleshooting and Testing Strategies Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 13: Getting Started with Ansible Automation Controller Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Chapter 14: Execution Environments Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Assessments Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
(3 Ratings)
5 star 100%
4 star 0%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
A. Zubarev Jan 21, 2024
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I have been trying to navigate the ever growing complexities of deployments automation and the IaC (even though it is not my primary task) for quite some time. My primary objectives are to create tested out, repeatable deployments and have them documented. Ansible is seemingly the perfect tool for that.I picked the electronic copy of Practical Ansible for being the most up to date with the latest advancements in it, and because it is a 2nd edition of the book from a mature duo of authors.The book is well structured starting with a gentle introduction to the philosophy of Ansible and its limitations to advanced coding (best practices included), but wait, there is even a chapter on Kubernetes!On the limitations side of the tool, be aware that even though Microsoft is fully committed to Python without which no serious automation is possible it requires knowledge of PowerShell. To add another, I realized Ansible has no notion of state. I trust things will improve over time because it is backed by RedHat.The book has material solidifying questions and self-assessments which help to persist the focus points in memory (I always value them).If I can think of a negative, it would be on the Ansible's UI chapter, it felt too short, or maybe the Ansible project did not think UI first.Let's put it simply: the book delivers superbly on the topic of automation and thereby recommended.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Tiny Jan 22, 2024
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
This is an exhaustive step by step guide into using Ansible. The document is chock-full of examples, code, and details on how to set up, integrate and maximize your use of Ansible. This is a vital reference guide for anyone using Ansible on a daily basis. If you only use Ansible infrequently, this still can be a great reference to look for the Yaml specifics and elements that can help you succeed to the next level.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
jml Jan 21, 2024
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Practical Ansible 2e is a well-written, easy to follow book that will become the go-to reference for anyone working with Ansible. Coverage starts with the basics and progresses in a logical fashion through real-life implementation recipes including discussions of YAML and playbooks, Galaxy, conditionals, loops, blocks, and version control via ansible-pull. The new (to 2.9) collections functionality is discussed along with the existing modules and plugins groupings. Directory layout, playbooks, updates, security, and troubleshooting are all given good treatment and of course containerization via Kubernetes is covered as well.There’s not much, if anything, in the Ansible world that is missing from this book. The writing style is clear and explanatory, numerous examples are provided, and each chapter ends with a quiz, making Practical Ansible 2e usable as a textbook. The one improvement that I’d recommend would be to provide the quiz answers at the end of the quiz in each chapter rather than at the end of the book, eliminating the necessity to flip back and forth in order to check your work. Overall. Practical Ansible 2e needs to be on every Ansible developer’s bookshelf.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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