Write and Run Your First Playbook

Beginner10 minTrending

Create a basic Ansible playbook to install packages, configure services, and deploy changes across multiple hosts.

Prerequisites

-Ansible installed
-SSH access to target hosts
-Inventory file configured

Steps

Create a playbook file

Creates a YAML playbook that installs and starts nginx on all hosts in the webservers group.

$ cat > site.yml << 'EOF' --- - name: Configure web servers hosts: webservers become: true tasks: - name: Install nginx apt: name: nginx state: present update_cache: true - name: Start nginx service service: name: nginx state: started enabled: true EOF

Always use 'become: true' when tasks require root privileges.

Run the playbook in check mode

Performs a dry run showing what changes would be made without actually applying them.

$ ansible-playbook site.yml --check --diff

Always run --check first on production systems to preview changes safely.

Run the playbook

Executes the playbook against all hosts defined in the webservers group.

$ ansible-playbook site.yml

Run with verbose output

Shows detailed task output. Use -vv or -vvv for even more debugging information.

$ ansible-playbook site.yml -v

Limit to specific hosts

Runs the playbook only against a single host for targeted deployment.

$ ansible-playbook site.yml --limit web01.example.com

Full Script

full-script.sh

# Write and run an Ansible playbook
cat > site.yml << 'EOF'
---
- name: Configure web servers
  hosts: webservers
  become: true
  tasks:
    - name: Install nginx
      apt:
        name: nginx
        state: present
        update_cache: true

    - name: Start nginx service
      service:
        name: nginx
        state: started
        enabled: true
EOF
ansible-playbook site.yml --check --diff
ansible-playbook site.yml

FAQ

Discussion

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# Write and run an Ansible playbook cat > site.yml << 'EOF' --- - name: Configure web servers hosts: webservers become: true tasks: - name: Install nginx apt: name: nginx state: present update_cache: true - name: Start nginx service service: name: nginx state: started enabled: true EOF ansible-playbook site.yml --check --diff ansible-playbook site.yml