What is Ansible and what can it automate?
How Ansible Works. Ansible is a radically simple IT automation engine that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, and many other IT needs. Designed for multi-tier deployments since day one, Ansible models your IT infrastructure by describing how all of your systems inter-relate, rather than just managing one system at a time.
Is there a future in Ansible?
So Ansible as a tool is here to stay, has a great future, atleast for next few years, but dont rely on just it for your career. Ansible Tasks allow you to break up bits of configuration policy into smaller files. These are blocks of code that can be used to automate any process.
What does an ansible do?
Why Ansible?
- Ansible is free and Open Source.
- Agentless. Ansible doesn’t require any agent on client machines unlike other automation tool exists in the market (Puppet, Chef, Salt.). It uses SSH protocol to connect the servers. ...
- Ansible uses YAML language which is very easy to learn.
- Supported by Red Hat.
What is Ansible used for?
Ansible is mainly used for the automation of cross-platform computer support tasks. It is fundamentally intended for IT professionals, who use it for configuration management, cloud provisioning, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, updates on workstations and servers, and nearly for anything a systems administrator does on a day-to-day basis.
What is ansible fact?
What are Ansible Facts. Ansible collects pretty much all the information about the remote hosts as it runs a playbook. The task of collecting this remote system information is called as Gathering Facts by ansible and the details collected are generally known as facts or variables.
What is ansible unsafe text?
Basically, the Ansible UnSafe Text is the statement which is an end variable or key (python) which holds the value. It can either be part of Dictionary or stand alone.
How many Ansible books are there?
To help you master Ansible. we have compiled 25+ Ansible Playbooks and Created a cheat sheet of ad hoc commands you can refer.
Can you collect minimal facts about a machine?
In some cases where you want to collect minimal facts about a machine like cpu and memory configuration alone. you can do that too.
Is status ansible unsafe?
Here in the preceding example, ansible_architecture and status both belong to Ansible UnSafe Text datatype but they are different as the variable status is part of a dictionary and another one is not
What is ansible facts?
Ansible facts are data gathered about target nodes (host nodes to be configured) and returned back to controller nodes. Ansible facts are stored in JSON format and are used to make important decisions about tasks based on their statistics. Facts are in an ansible_facts variable, which is managed by Ansible Engine.
What exactly are Ansible facts and how are they used?
Ansible facts are the host-specific system data and properties to which you connect. A fact can be the IP address, BIOS information, a system's software information, and even hardware information. Ansible facts help the admin to manage the hosts based on their current condition rather than taking the actions directly without having any info about the system's health.
What is the gather_facts module in Ansible?
The gather_facts module from the Ansible playbook runs the setup module by default at the start of each playbook to gather the facts about remote hosts.
Why are ansible facts important?
Ansible facts make it easier for sysadmins to control under what circumstances playbooks will run based on actual system information.
What format is ansible stored in?
Ansible facts are stored in JSON format and can be placed into three major categories:
How does Ansible make a system intelligent?
These facts make your Ansible system intelligent by providing the conditions for when to process some task. You can also process by not specifying or using the Ansible facts, but that would make the job as a sysadmin more hectic as the script may fail or change some of the files that were never intended to be modified.
How can Ansible be smarter?
In short, using Ansible facts, a system admin can make Ansible smarter by specifying parameters for when to perform tasks and when not to.
What is ansible facts?
Ansible facts are data related to your remote systems, including operating systems, IP addresses, attached filesystems, and more. You can access this data in the ansible_facts variable. By default, you can also access some Ansible facts as top-level variables with the ansible_ prefix. You can disable this behavior using ...
How to retain Ansible facts?
To retain Ansible facts for repeated use, select a different cache plugin. See Cache Plugins for details. Fact caching can improve performance. If you manage thousands of hosts, you can configure fact caching to run nightly, then manage configuration on a smaller set of servers periodically throughout the day.
What is setup module in Ansible?
The setup module in Ansible automatically discovers a standard set of facts about each host. If you want to add custom values to your facts, you can write a custom facts module, set temporary facts with a ansible.builtin.set_fact task, or provide permanent custom facts using the facts.d directory.
What is the key part of ansible_local?
The key part in the key=value pairs will be converted into lowercase inside the ansible_local variable. Using the example above, if the ini file contained XYZ=3 in the [general] section, then you should expect to access it as: { { ansible_local ['preferences'] ['general'] ['xyz'] }} and not { { ansible_local ['preferences'] ['general'] ['XYZ'] }}. This is because Ansible uses Python’s ConfigParser which passes all option names through the optionxform method and this method’s default implementation converts option names to lower case.
How to add static facts?
To add static facts, simply add a file with the .fact extension. For example, create /etc/ansible/facts.d/preferences.fact with this content:
Which is more efficient, custom facts or facts.d?
If you use this pattern frequently, a custom facts module would be more efficient than facts.d.
Can you use facts in a conditional?
You can use facts in conditionals (see Conditionals) and also in templates. You can also use facts to create dynamic groups of hosts that match particular criteria, see the group_by module documentation for details.
How does Ansible work?
Ansible works by connecting to your nodes and pushing out small programs, called "Ansible modules" to them. These programs are written to be resource models of the desired state of the system. Ansible then executes these modules (over SSH by default), and removes them when finished.
What is Ansible software?
Ansible is a radically simple IT automation engine that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, and many other IT needs.
What is ansible authorized key?
Ansible's "authorized_key" module is a great way to use ansible to control what machines can access what hosts. Other options, like kerberos or identity management systems, can also be used.
What is ansible INI?
By default, Ansible represents what machines it manages using a very simple INI file that puts all of your managed machines in groups of your own choosing.
What language does Ansible use?
It uses no agents and no additional custom security infrastructure, so it's easy to deploy - and most importantly, it uses a very simple language (YAML, in the form of Ansible Playbooks) that allow you to describe your automation jobs in a way that approaches plain English.
How many modules are there in Ansible?
Ansible contains a giant toolbox of built-in modules, well over 750 of them.
Can you use SSH keys with Ansible?
SSH KEYS ARE YOUR FRIENDS. Passwords are supported, but SSH keys with ssh-agent are one of the best ways to use Ansible. Though if you want to use Kerberos, that's good too. Lots of options! Root logins are not required, you can login as any user, and then su or sudo to any user.
What is ansible set_fact?
Ansible set_fact is different from vars, vars_file, or include_var where you know the variable value beforehand, whereas when using set_fact, we can store the value after preparing it on the fly using certain task like using filters or taking subpart of another variable. When used with parameter cacheable equal to yes, then the variable can be used across executions using a fact cache.
How Does Ansible Set_Fact Work?
The work behavior of Ansible set_fact is the same as Ansible vars. But which makes it more relevant for dynamic environments is the flexibility to store data after processing. We have below available parameters and acceptable value.
What is set_fact in Ansible?
Ansible set_fact is a useful tool. This helps you to gather information from your remote hosts and adds the flexibility of modifying it before assigning it. Also, you may acknowledge that if you have a lot of hosts to be managed by Ansible, then working with set_fact is quite complex. So we first need to analyze that whether we need to set facts or not and then use these accordingly.
How to assign a variable under set_fact?
The variable assignment under set_fact is done by using key-pair values where the key is the variable name and value is the assignment to it . A simple example will be like below: –
Can ansible filters be used to create values?
We can use ansible filters to create values for.
Why does set_fact produce static values?
Because of the nature of tasks, set_fact will produce ‘static’ values for a variable. Unlike normal ‘lazy’ variables, the value gets evaluated and templated on assignment.
Can ansible variables be overridden?
Per the standard Ansible variable precedence rules, other types of variables have a higher priority, so this value may be overridden.
