Ansible tips and tricks

Note

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Welcome to the Ansible tips and tricks guide. These tips and tricks have helped us optimize our Ansible usage and we offer them here as suggestions. We hope they will help you organize content, write playbooks, maintain inventory, and execute Ansible. Ultimately, though, you should use Ansible in the way that makes the most sense for your organization and your goals.

• General tips
  • Keep it simple
  • Use version control
  • Customize the CLI output
  • Avoid configuration-dependent content
• Playbook tips
  • Use whitespace
  • Always name plays, tasks, and blocks
  • Always mention the state
  • Use comments
  • Use fully qualified collection names
• Inventory tips
  • Use dynamic inventory with clouds
  • Group inventory by function
  • Separate production and staging inventory
  • Keep vaulted variables safely visible
• Execution tricks
  • Use Execution Environments
  • Try it in staging first
  • Update in batches
  • Handling OS and distro differences
• Sample Ansible setup
  • Sample directory layout
  • Alternative directory layout
  • Sample group and host variables
  • Sample playbooks organized by function
  • Sample task and handler files in a function-based role
  • What the sample setup enables
  • Organizing for deployment or configuration
  • Using local Ansible modules