Playbooks: Ansible for Deployment, Configuration Management, and Orchestration

See also

YAML Scripts

Learn about YAML syntax

Ansible Modules

Learn about available modules and writing your own

The Inventory File, Patterns, and Groups

Learn about how to select hosts

Playbooks are a completely different way to use ansible and are particularly awesome.

They are the basis for a really simple configuration management and multi-machine deployment system, unlike any that already exist, and one that is very well suited to deploying complex applications.

While you might run the main /usr/bin/ansible program for ad-hoc tasks, playbooks are more likely to be kept in source control and used to push out your configuration or assure the configurations of your remote systems are in spec.

Playbook Example

Playbooks are expressed in YAML format and have a minimum of syntax. Each playbook is composed of one or more ‘plays’ in a list. By composing a playbook of multiple ‘plays’, it is possible to orchestrate multi-machine deployments, running certain steps on all machines in the webservers group, then certain steps on the database server group, then more commands back on the webservers group, etc:

---
- hosts: webservers
  vars:
    http_port: 80
    max_clients: 200
  user: root
  tasks:
  - include: base.yml somevar=3 othervar=4
  - name: write the apache config file
    action: template src=/srv/httpd.j2 dest=/etc/httpd.conf
    notify:
    - restart apache
  - name: ensure apache is running
    action: service name=httpd state=started
  handlers:
    - include: handlers.yml

Hosts line

The hosts line is a list of one or more groups or host patterns, seperated by colons, as described in the ‘patterns’ documentation. This is just like the first parameter to /usr/bin/ansible.

Vars section

A list of variables and values that can be used in the plays. These can be used in templates or ‘action’ lines and are dereferenced using `jinja2` syntax like this:

{{ varname }}

Further, if there are discovered variables about the system (say, if facter or ohai were installed) these variables bubble up back into the playbook, and can be used on each system just like explicitly set variables. Facter variables are prefixed with ‘facter_‘ and Ohai variables are prefixed with ‘ohai_‘. So for instance, if I wanted to write the hostname into the /etc/motd file, I could say:

• name: write the motd
• action: template src=/srv/templates/motd.j2 dest=/etc/motd

And in /srv/templates/motd.j2::

You are logged into {{ facter_hostname }}

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s talk about tasks.

Tasks list

Each play contains a list of tasks. Tasks are executed in order, one at a time, against all machines matched by the play’s host pattern, before moving on to the next task.

Hosts with failed tasks are taken out of the rotation for the entire playbook. If things fail, simply correct the playbook file and rerun.

Modules other than command are idempotent, meaning if you run them again, they will make the changes they are told to make to bring the system to the desired state.

Task name and action

Every task must have a name, which is included in the output from running the playbook.

The action line is the name of an ansible module followed by parameters. Usually these are expressed in key=value form, except for the command module, which looks just like a Linux/Unix command line. See the module documentation for more info.

Variables, as mentioned above, can be used in action lines. So if, hypothetically, you wanted to make a directory on each system named after the hostname ... yeah, that’s I know silly ... you could do it like so:

• name: make a directory
• action: mkdir /tmp/{{ facter_hostname }}

Notify statements

Nearly all modules are written to be ‘idempotent’ and can signal when they have affected a change on the remote system. If a notify statement is used, the named handler will be run against each system where a change was effected, but NOT on systems where no change occurred. This happens after all of the tasks are run. For example, if notifying Apache and potentially replacing lots of configuration files, you could have Apache restart just once, at the end of a run. If you need Apache restarted in the middle of a run, you could just make a task for it, no harm done. Notifiers are optional.

Handlers

Handlers are lists of tasks, not really any different from regular tasks, that are referenced by name. Handlers are what notifiers notify. If nothing notifies a handler, it will not run. Regardless of how many things notify a handler, it will run only once, after all of the tasks complete in a particular play.

Includes

Not all tasks have to be listed directly in the main file. An include file can contain a list of tasks (in YAML) as well, optionally passing extra variables into the file. Variables passed in can be deferenced like this (assume a variable named ‘user’)

{{ user }}

For instance, if deploying multiple wordpress instances, I could contain all of my tasks in a wordpress.yml file, and use it like so:

• tasks:

  • include: wordpress.yml user=timmy
  • include: wordpress.yml user=alice
  • include: wordpress.yml user=bob

In addition to the explicitly passed in parameters, all variables from the vars section are also available.

Asynchronous Actions and Polling

(Information on this feature is pending)

Executing A Playbook

To run a playbook:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml