Basic Ansible in 10 mins

• "site.yml" file
• playbook containing
• "roles" that will be applied to individual host groups / "hosts"
• how the hosts will be accessed
• and by what user to run as
• Puppet equivalent is "nodes.pp"
• "hosts" file
• use real/local DNS hostname to define which hosts are in which hostgroups
• example: webserver1, webserver2, haproxy1, haproxy2, mongo1, mongo2
• some variables like "port" can be added too
• "group-vars" directory
• key/value pairs to use when generating output from template files
• files named identically to hostgroup names defined in "hosts" file
• these are more in-line in Puppet, and less controllable/flexible
• "roles" directory
• Puppet equivalents are "modules"/"classes"
• directories arbitrarily named to match "roles" in site.yml
• e.g. "tomcat", "common", "mongod"
• "templates" directory
• files with variables that are resolved using "group-vars" key/values
• moved on to target systems using task keyword "template"
• same name is used in Puppet
• "files"
• raw files to be moved into place on the target filesystems
• used by tasks with keyword "file"
• same name used in Puppet
• "handlers"
• "main.yml"
• control system services on target systems
• "service" keyword
• "state", e.g. "restarted"
• in Puppet, these are not broken out from other "resources"
• "tasks"
• this is the core list of actions to perform on target systems
• Puppet equivalents are "includes"/"classes", maybe "modules" as well
• "main.yml"
• collection of tasks
• uses yml structure
• "name" is arbitrary reference for developers
• ansible keyword to perform some action on the system
• ansible keywords: "file", "template", "command"
• puppet equivalents are called "resources"
• conditionals/dependencies: "when", "notify", "wait_for"