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Okay friends, so let's get hands on with Ansible.

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So the first component that we are going to talk about is that Ansible

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configuration file.

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So if you happen to search for Ansible configuration file, you can click this

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top link right here.

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And notice it says here that certain settings in Ansible are adjusted with this

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particular

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file Ansible.cfg. Now one thing to note, Ansible is going to seek to find this

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particular configuration

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file in a variety of different places, each with a greater priority than the
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file in a variety of different places, each with a greater priority than the

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other.

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Now it says here the pass where the configuration file is searched and listed

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as in the reference

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documentation. If we just click this link here, this here is effectively the

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locations and priority

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levels in which Ansible will look for this particular configuration file. So

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the first thing is that

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if you happen to set your own environment variable and point it to a particular

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location,

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this is the first and primary location where Ansible is going to seek to find

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this particular

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file. Now if you have not set this environment variable, the next place it's
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file. Now if you have not set this environment variable, the next place it's

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going to be checked

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is for a file called Ansible.cfg in the current directory. So whatever you

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happen to be running

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Ansible from, it's going to say hey, is there a file in the same directory

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right here called

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Ansible.cfg and if it is, then it's going to look to use the configuration

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specified within that

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particular file. Now if you do not have the Ansible configuration file within

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the current directory

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where Ansible happens to be running, the next location is going to be in the
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where Ansible happens to be running, the next location is going to be in the

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user's home directory.

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So we can see this via the tilde character, which we know is their home

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directory. Now if

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you've got a key now, you'll notice that we happen to have a dot before the

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word Ansible.

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Denoting that in this case here, this would actually be a hidden file. Now

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suppose you have not created

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any of these environment variables or the files in these particular directories

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, the general system

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way configuration file is going to be found in the exit directory and then into

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the Ansible folder

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and the file itself will simply be just called Ansible.cfg. That is the order
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and the file itself will simply be just called Ansible.cfg. That is the order

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of operation.

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Now in my case here, the practice that I tend to follow is just simply putting

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an Ansible.cfg

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file within the directory in which I am working. You can specify anything you

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so wish, but that

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is the practice that I am going to be following. If you don't use that

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particular practice,

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just at least understand the order of operations and where Ansible is going to

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look to find

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that particular config. Now if we search Ansible inventory, let's collect this

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link here.

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If we scroll on down, we can see some examples of Ansible inventories.
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If we scroll on down, we can see some examples of Ansible inventories.

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Here we happen to have what is known as an Ansible inventory in the I and I

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format.

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Now the way we construct this is we specify our group names in square brackets.

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So we have a

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group here called web servers and inside of the web servers just below, we

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specify the actual

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nodes which belong to that particular group. So food.example.com and bar.

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example.com,

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they happen to be web server devices and below we have to have a grouping of

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database servers,

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DB servers and the nodes belonging to that particular group is one.example.com,
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DB servers and the nodes belonging to that particular group is one.example.com,

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two.example.com and three.example.com. Now in my opinion, this happens to be

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the easier way to

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happen to construct your Ansible inventory just as really simple, doesn't cause

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any hassle.

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But ultimately, I would say it's best suited for simple inventories.

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If you just happen to have some groups, a few nodes belonging to those groups,

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then it is a very good way to structure your Ansible inventory.

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Below though, we can see the same type of information specified in the YAML
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Below though, we can see the same type of information specified in the YAML

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format.

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Now the interesting thing here is with respect to YAML, we have a lot of

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emphasis on indentation.

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We'll talk about that a lot more in an upcoming skill. But basically, the

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indentation is very,

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very important if you happen to get the indentation wrong. The way the

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information is ingested is

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going to be completely different and in fact, it can just be invalid and will

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not work. So in my

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opinion, this is a little bit more complex because an armor rose to follow is

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easier to get the syntax

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wrong. However, if you happen to have groups within groups, i.e. nested groups
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wrong. However, if you happen to have groups within groups, i.e. nested groups

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and a much more

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complex inventory, having that information represented in YAML format is

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actually a lot

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easier to look at visually because you can easily see via the indentation,

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which group belongs to

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which group and to quickly assess visually the order of the hierarchy. Now like

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I say, for error

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purposes, it's going to be really quite simple. So I'm just going to stick to

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the i and i format.

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But if you so wish, if you're more comfortable with YAML, then feel free to

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construct your

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inventory in that manner. So with that said, let's go and begin configuring our
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inventory in that manner. So with that said, let's go and begin configuring our

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Ansible

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configuration file once again, I'm going to specify mine within my working

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directory. So right now,

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I'm inside of the Ansible home directory for the Ansible user. If we do a

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listing, we can see we

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have no files or directories within here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going

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to create a particular

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file just called Ansible dot CFG. If I create that do a listing, now that file

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exists. But as we know,

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there is no content within that particular file, let's add to it. So I will

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just save them

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Ansible CFG. If I hit i for insert, I can go into insert mode. And similar to
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Ansible CFG. If I hit i for insert, I can go into insert mode. And similar to

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the Ansible

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inventory, this is also going to be written via the i and i format. So I'm

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going to say within my

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square brackets, I'm going to create my default group, which is going to

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effectively denote my

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default settings. Now the first directive I'm going to give is specifying where

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about my

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inventory can be located. Now by default, if you did not specify an inventory

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location,

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the default is going to be in the AC directory. And then within the Ansible

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directory, there

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should be a file called hosts. So if we don't specify here, Ansible will look
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should be a file called hosts. So if we don't specify here, Ansible will look

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to this particular

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file. But in order to keep things simple, I'm going to specify the Ansible, she

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looked within the

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current directory for a particular file called inventory dot i and i. Now I'm

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going to specify

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the directive for the remote user, this is basically going to be the username,

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the Ansible is going

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to use in order to access the remote machines. Now remember, we created a

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dedicated Ansible user

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account on the devices that we're going to manage. So right here, we're going

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to specify that Ansible

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should actually use that particular account when logging in. Now I'm going to
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should actually use that particular account when logging in. Now I'm going to

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say host key checking,

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we're going to specify that as false, we don't really care about key checking.

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And then I'm going

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to say deprecation warning pretty much very often, Ansible is going to give you

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warnings about

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modules and whatnot that happened to be outdated. We don't want to have to

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worry about that. So I'll

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just leave these warning messages set to false. So these are our default

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configurations. What I

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now want to do is to specify how Ansible can actually elevate privileges. You

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know the way you do when

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you happen to have a shell within a device, you can just say pseudo and then
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you happen to have a shell within a device, you can just say pseudo and then

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type in the super user

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password. That is how we could perform an administrative system wide task. In

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the case here, we want to

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tell Ansible how to do that. So I'm going to say with thin mind square brackets

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once again,

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privilege escalation, basically how we can escalate our privileges. What I'm

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going to say is become

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equals true, which means we are going to seek to become the root user. I will

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specify how we

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actually elevate our privileges by specifying the become method. And I'll say

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we do that via the

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pseudo commands. And then I'll say the become user is simply the root user. And
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pseudo commands. And then I'll say the become user is simply the root user. And

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I will say become

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ask pass. And I'll set that to the value false. We don't want to be asking for

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passwords after all.

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So what's that now done if I press escape and then colon wq to writing quit and

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then hit enter,

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we have now written this configuration file. Now as per the configuration file,

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we specified that

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there should be a file called inventory dot I and I within the same directory

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right now that

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doesn't exist. So let's just create it by saying touch inventory dot I and I,

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if I don't LS,

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now that file exists. And we want to actually specify the content of that file.
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now that file exists. And we want to actually specify the content of that file.

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So inside of

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here, we are once again going to be using the INI format. So the grouping I'm

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going to create

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as within square brackets, I'm just going to create a group called all which

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will specify

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all of my devices. Now we can just specify the IP addresses of these particular

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devices,

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such as 192, 168, 160, and then specify 134, which would be the blue box and

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then we can do the IP

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address of 192, 168, 160 dot 135 for the yellow box. But quite honestly, this
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address of 192, 168, 160 dot 135 for the yellow box. But quite honestly, this

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is a little bit

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clunky. We would rather have some type of name resolution. So before I actually

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do this,

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if I just press Q to quit, what I want to do is within my Etsy directory, so I

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'll say pseudo

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them, Etsy and going to the host file. This is where we can specify some static

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DNS mappings.

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So if I happen to say 192, 168, 160 dot 134, and if I just map that to the name

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example dot blue

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box dot com, and I'll give it a short name of blue box. And I'll also specify
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box dot com, and I'll give it a short name of blue box. And I'll also specify

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192, 168, 160,

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dot 135. And I'll also say example dot yellow box dot com and we can reference

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that as the

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short name yellow box. If I just happened to press right and correct to safety

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changes,

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if I now just try to ping blue box, notice within here, we happen to be getting

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the name

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resolution we happen to be picking 192, 168, 160 dot 134. So because of this,

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and by the way,

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just similarly to prove this, if I say ping yellow box, we ping the other

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address within the

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answerable inventory, I'm just going to reference these host names. So once
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answerable inventory, I'm just going to reference these host names. So once

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again, go back into the

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inventory, enter to the all group or specify we have a blue box and a yellow

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box. And if I so

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wished I could create more groups. Of course, we only have two devices, but

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imagine you happen

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to have 500 devices, maybe somewhere in the USA, I can say, okay, we have a USA

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group,

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and then list all devices that happen to be in the United States, like device

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one, device two,

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and then maybe we've got a group for the UK, maybe say, UK server, UK database,

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whatever it may be,
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whatever it may be,

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you can create as many groups as you so wish, but like I said, we only have two

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devices,

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and we can reference those devices just by specifying the keyword all. That is

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a group that houses

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both of these devices. So really simple inventory we have right here, let's

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press WQ to write

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and quits. So with these basic components up and running, what I now want to do

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is to ensure that

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answerable can actually reach those devices within the all group, that is the

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blue box and the yellow

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box. And the answerable is actually able to successfully communicate and

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authenticate with those

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devices because remember we're not actually using any passwords, we're relying
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devices because remember we're not actually using any passwords, we're relying

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on those SSH keys.

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So a simple test we can do is just simple say, answerable all to target the all

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group,

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and then I'll specify I want to use the module ping. If I hit answer, look at

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this right here,

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it says yellow box success, we're able to reach that device. And below here we

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have the blue box

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and also a success. With that now done, answerable is now operational, and it

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is now fully capable

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of automating our lab environments.