Ansible Playbook

1. Install Ansible

Ensure Ansible is installed on your control node (the machine from which you run the playbooks).

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ansible -y        

2. Set Up Inventory File

Define the inventory file (hosts), which lists the managed nodes and groups of nodes. The default inventory file is located at /etc/ansible/hosts, but you can specify a custom file using the -i option.

Example (hosts file):

[webservers]
web1.example.com
web2.example.com

[dbservers]
db1.example.com        

3. Create a Playbook File

A playbook is a YAML file containing one or more plays. Each play maps a group of hosts to roles.

Example (site.yml):

---
- name: Install and configure web servers
  hosts: webservers
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Ensure Apache is installed
      apt:
        name: apache2
        state: present
        update_cache: yes

    - name: Ensure Apache is started
      service:
        name: apache2
        state: started

    - name: Deploy HTML file
      copy:
        src: /path/to/index.html
        dest: /var/www/html/index.html

- name: Install and configure database servers
  hosts: dbservers
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Ensure MySQL is installed
      apt:
        name: mysql-server
        state: present
        update_cache: yes

    - name: Ensure MySQL is started
      service:
        name: mysql
        state: started        

4. Playbook Structure

• Hosts: The target group of hosts.
• Become: Elevate privilege to run the tasks as a superuser.
• Tasks: Define the list of tasks to execute.

5. Run the Playbook

Execute the playbook using the ansible-playbook command.

ansible-playbook -i hosts site.yml        

Thank you for reading