Ansible Playbooks: The Basics

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Ansible Playbooks: The Basics

The playbook concept is at the heart of Ansible. Writing a playbook to configure a system to the desired state is what makes this exercise so valuable to students who are wanting to get serious with Ansible. After completing this learning activity on how to configure an inventory all the way through to a mass software deployment, students will be another step closer to an official Red Hat Ansible certification. *This course is not approved or sponsored by Red Hat.*

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Lab Info

Level

Intermediate

Last updated

Sep 23, 2025

Duration

1h 0m

Challenge

Create an Inventory in `/home/ansible/inventory `That Contains a Host Group Named `web`. The `web` Group Should Contain `node1` and `node2`
- echo "[web]" >> /home/ansible/inventory
- echo "node1" >> /home/ansible/inventory
- echo "node2" >> /home/ansible/inventory
Challenge

Create a Playbook in `/home/ansible/web.yml`

echo "---" >> /home/ansible/web.yml
Challenge

Configure the Playbook to Install `httpd` on the `web` Group

Using a text editor, such as vim, edit /home/ansible/web.yml to contain the following text block below the line containing "---": - hosts: web become: yes tasks: - name: install httpd yum: name=httpd state=latest
Challenge

Configure the Playbook to Start and Enable the `httpd` Service on the `web` Group

Using a text editor such as vim, edit /home/ansible/web.yml to contain the following task block after the "install httpd task": - name: start and enable httpd service: name=httpd state=started enabled=yes
Challenge

Configure the Playbook to Retrieve the Website from *http://repo.example.com/website.tgz* on Each Server in the `web` Group

Using a text editor such as vim, edit /home/ansible/web.yml to contain the following task block after the "start and enable httpd" task: - name: retrieve website from repo get_url: url=http://repo.example.com/website.tgz dest=/tmp/website.tgz
Challenge

Configure the Playbook to Unarchive the Website into `/var/www/html` on All Servers in the `web` Group

Using a text editor such as vim, edit /home/ansible/web.yml to contain the following task block after the "retrieve website from repo" task: - name: install website unarchive: remote_src=yes src=/tmp/website.tgz dest=/var/www/html/
Challenge

Verify the Work by Executing the Playbook Using the Inventory

ansible-playbook -i /home/ansible/inventory /home/ansible/web.yml

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