Gain insights into Ansible's core features like inventory, playbooks, and roles. Delve into writing playbooks, using Jinja2, and organize tasks for efficient, stable IT infrastructure management.

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Configuration management plays a pivotal role in maintaining a stable and organized IT infrastructure by enabling the systematic gathering of information from remote hosts, facilitating server provisioning, and streamlining application upgrades or deployments.

You will learn the core features of Ansible, such as inventory, variables, playbooks, roles, and handlers, which serve as the building blocks for configuration management. You will learn how to write playbooks that define and execute complex orchestration tasks with ease. Next, you’ll learn how to use roles to maintain consistency across configuration management projects and how to harness the power of Jinja2 to apply logic and control structures and generate configuration files dynamically.

After completing this course, you will be equipped with the necessary skills for customizing configurations, organizing automation tasks efficiently, and maintaining a desired state for your infrastructure.

Configuration Management Using Ansible

# Overview

**Loops** are a fundamental construct in Ansible, allowing us to repeat a set of tasks multiple times, iterating over a list or another iterable. Loops enable us to automate repetitive actions and manage multiple resources efficiently. In Ansible, loops can be used single-handedly in tasks or used within Jinja2 template files.

# Working with loops

There are several keywords and constructs to work with loops that make them flexible and adaptable for various use cases. Common keywords for working with loops include:

- `loop`
- `with_items`
- `with_nested`
- `with_<lookup term>`
- `until`

## The `loop` keyword
The `loop` keyword is used to iterate over a list or other iterable within a task. It's typically used with tasks that involve iterating through a list of items and performing actions on each item. Here is an example:

---
- name: Using loop to create multiple directories
  hosts: web_servers
  tasks:
    - name: Create necessary directories
      file:
        path: "{{ item }}"
        state: directory
        owner: root
        group: root
        mode: 0775
      loop:
        - /home/config_files/nginx
        - /home/config_files/apache

The following is an explanation of the above code snippet:

- **Lines 6–11:** We use the `file` module to create two directories, `/home/config_files/nginx` and `/home/config_files/apache`, as well as set the relevant properties for the directories like `owner`, `group` and `mode`.
- **Lines 13–14**: As a parameter to the `file` module, we use the `loop` keyword to specify the two directories that need to be created.

## The **`with_items`** keyword

The `with_items` keyword is similar to the `loop` construct and is used to iterate over a list of items and execute a task for each item. It allows us to repeat a task multiple times with a different value from the specified list, as shown below:

Learn how to use loops in Ansible to perform repeated tasks.

Getting Started

What Is Configuration Management?

Basics of Ansible

Major Concepts in Ansible

Ansible Variables and Other Elements

Manage Configuration with Ansible

Wrap Up

Deploy a Web Application Using Ansible

Loops

Overview

Working with loops

The `loop` keyword