Introduction to Ansible Transcripts
Chapter: Introduction
Lecture: Working with Ansible
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Like any software development tool Ansible pairs really well with strong reference material. I keep a few tabs open whenever I'm developing
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my Ansible playbooks. I'll show them to you now. You shouldn't need them while you're working through these videos, but if you want to take a breather
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or want to dive deeper into a subject find out more about a module it can be really handy to keep these open.
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We just looked at the Github repository for Ansible at github.com/ansible/ansible. I bring it up again now because there are a few
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directories that are more important than the other ones. Specifically, lib/ansible - this is where the majority
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of the source code for Ansible lives and in particular you'll want to look under the modules directory
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because these modules are going to be what's doing the work every time you write a playbook. For example, if you want to send notifications
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when you hit a certain step or something happens in your playbook take a look under the notification module and you'll see all the source code
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for every different type of notification and integration that you can apply in your playbook. I'm constantly referencing the Ansible source code
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not because the documentation isn't good but just because sometimes its easiest to read the source code especially if you're a Python developer.
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Speaking of Ansible documentation, it's fantastic and you can access it at docs.ansible.com. It's broken into many areas
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the one that can be most useful to you right now is under 'Getting Started.' You can read this to get some context about how Ansible works over SSH.
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It's handy just in case you want a secondary resource. Also under 'Documentation,' you can gain additional context about
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playbooks, inventory files, and developing your own modules. The one option that I always keep opened though is the module index.
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This is the master guide for everything you can implement with Ansible without having to write your own custom modules.
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We saw how to create directories and files with an example Ansible playbook. If you want to learn more about file module you go under 'Files modules,'
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and select 'File.' My favorite part of the Ansible modules documentation is that it follows a very clear boiler plate pattern
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you've got a quick synopsis all of the parameters that are available to you some notes just in case there are exceptions
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or things you need to be aware of with different operating systems and then he handiest bit of all
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I'm actually surprised every single bit of documentation for every project does not contain this example code. Example code, you can copy and paste
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by highlighting, copying, putting it into your playbook customizing it for your own purposes. If you scroll down a little further
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you'll see the status of the module. The main reason why this is important is because stable modules guarantee backwards compatibility.
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For most modules, you won't have to worry about this but if you see a new module in a new Ansible release
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you'll just want to check the status to make sure that it's not going to have some backwards breaking changes. One more bit of documentation
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if you want to get a high level overview of Ansible configuration management, deployments web server configuration
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take a look at the table of contents page at fullstackPython.com. The 2 chapters that'll be most applicable to you
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are going to be 'Chapter 5: Web App Deployments' and 'Chapter 6: DevOps,' and where possible
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I try to give plain language explanation along with diagrams to show you how deployments work or how configuration management tools like Ansible work
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along with the best resources that I've found to accomplish your objectives. So the two mandatory tabs github.com/ansible/ansible
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the second one docs.ansible.com and optionally, if you need a higher level overview the table of contents page on fullstackPython.com.