An Ansible Playbook is a YAML file that describes the desired state of systems as an ordered list of plays. Each play targets a group of hosts from the inventory and runs tasks, where every task calls an Ansible module. Playbooks are Ansible’s main unit of automation.
Sample Ansible Playbook
- name: Install and start nginx
hosts: webservers
become: true
tasks:
- name: Install nginx
ansible.builtin.dnf:
name: nginx
state: present
- name: Start and enable nginx
ansible.builtin.service:
name: nginx
state: started
enabled: true
Run it with ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml site.yml. Useful options include --check (dry run), --diff, --limit and -e for extra variables.
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