Ansible for DevOps: Server and configuration management for humans

Ansible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool (with a few other tricks up its sleeve). This book will help those familiar with the command line and basic shell scripting start using Ansible to provision and manage anywhere from one to thousands of servers.

The book begins with fundamentals, like installing Ansible, setting up a basic inventory file, and basic concepts, then guides you through Ansible’s many uses, including ad-hoc commands, basic and advanced playbooks, application deployments, custom modules, and special cases like running ansible in ‘pull’ mode when you have thousands of servers to manage (or more). Everything is explained with pertinent real-world examples, often using Vagrant-managed virtual machines.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Getting Started with Ansible
Chapter 2 – Local Infrastructure Development: Ansible and Vagrant
Chapter 3 – Ad-Hoc Commands
Chapter 4 – Ansible Playbooks
Chapter 5 – Ansible Playbooks – Beyond the Basics
Chapter 6 – Playbook Organization – Roles and Includes
Chapter 7 – Inventories
Chapter 8 – Ansible Cookbooks
Chapter 9 – Deployments with Ansible
Chapter 10 – Server Security and Ansible
Chapter 11 – Automating Your Automation – Ansible Tower and CI/CD
Appendix A – Using Ansible on Windows workstations
Appendix B – Ansible Best Practices and Conventions