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So friends, now that we have a better understanding about YAML, what we now

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want to do is to actually

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get hands on with Ansible.

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Now here's the thing, the very first thing we're going to be doing with Ansible

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is not

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going to involve YAML or Playbooks.

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We're going to be looking at something called ad hoc commands to effectively

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manage these

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two machines we have right here on the fly directly via the command line.

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So with that said, let's just do it.

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So like I say, I have my two virtual machines.

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I have my yellow box and my blue box right here, let me just minimize these
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I have my yellow box and my blue box right here, let me just minimize these

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from now.

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And right here I have my what is going to be control node for Ansible.

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So right now within my directory structure, I have my inventory as we know, let

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's just

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denote my blue box and my yellow box.

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And these are correlating to the IP addresses within the XA host configuration

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file.

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We can see here I have mapped blue box to the IP address of 192.168.134, which

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is the

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first machine we're managing, as well as we have the name yellow box correl

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ating to

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the dot 135 address.

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So we have these two devices map within our inventory.
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So we have these two devices map within our inventory.

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We can refer to both devices at once by just referencing the all group, which

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comprises

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all the devices we're managing, which is only two after all.

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And we have our Ansible CFG file.

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So inside of here, we specify where our inventory is.

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The user we're going to log in as is going to be Ansible.

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And we have some basic information about how we elevate the privileges.

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We talked about this in the previous skill.

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Now right now I am actually not going to go and write a playbook.

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Like I said, we're going to use these ad hoc commands.
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Like I said, we're going to use these ad hoc commands.

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Now ad hoc is simply a word that actually comes from Latin.

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And it just simply means for this.

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And this actually kind of tells you the purpose and use case for using ad hoc

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commands.

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It's kind of like a off the cuff thing you would do for a one off type of thing

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.

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These are absolutely not meant to replace the use of playbooks.

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It should be used for more repeatable, reliable and well tested automation.

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But sometimes perhaps maybe you don't have a particular playbook already

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created.

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And you just want to make a quick change to a few devices in the network.
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And you just want to make a quick change to a few devices in the network.

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Good way we can instruct Ansible to do this is just quickly via an ad hoc

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command.

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So before we actually run a command, let's go and check the Ansible

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documentation.

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So if you just search for Ansible ad hoc commands, we can see we have this

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documentation

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right here.

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Let's click the link.

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Now it says right here an Ansible ad hoc command is a command line tool like I

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say

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it's not a playbook.

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And it's used to automate a single task on one or more managed nodes.

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Basically you can specify which set of devices within your inventory you want

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to target.

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And you can effectively induce a single task on all of those devices.
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And you can effectively induce a single task on all of those devices.

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So we see the actual use case for ad hoc commands.

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Like I say, they can be quickly used to reboot servers, copy files, that type

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of thing.

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So let's actually check out some of the syntax we can see here.

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So let's scroll on down.

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Let's look at this example and the documentation right here.

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It says Ansible Atlanta dash a and then it says a spin reboot.

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What's going on here?

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The first commands we see here is the word Ansible that is just invoking Ans

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ible to run

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an ad hoc command.

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The next one here says Atlanta.

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Now in this case here Atlanta will be a group in the user's inventory.
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Now in this case here Atlanta will be a group in the user's inventory.

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In our case, all we have is an all group.

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But like I say, as we know within the inventory, we can group things up by

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location or via

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function.

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In this case here, they are apparently grouping devices via the location.

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So in this case here Atlanta, Georgia.

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So all devices in Atlanta, we're going to specify a particular argument and

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this is

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effectively the command that we want to send.

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So pretty much we want to call the a spin reboot binary, which is going to

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reboot all

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of the devices within the Atlanta group.
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of the devices within the Atlanta group.

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Simply just typing this command on the command line could be potentially reb

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ooting thousands

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of devices in Atlanta all at the same time.

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Now notice here we have this option dash f for forks.

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This is actually really important as to how Ansible operates.

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We can see here by default Ansible is only going to use five simultaneous

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processes pretty

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much it will connect to five devices at the same time.

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Then once that is done, it will spin up a new process, connect to another five

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and then

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another five and then another five.

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If you only happen to have five or 10 devices, this is not really much of an
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If you only happen to have five or 10 devices, this is not really much of an

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issue.

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But if you happen to have thousands of devices, this can take a long time.

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So you can effectively touch your computer more.

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You test the power of the CPU and you can increase the amount of parallel

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connections

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at once.

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This is called forking.

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So imagine if you happen to have 100 devices, if you only connect to two

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devices at a time

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that's going to take a long time.

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Whereas if you connect to 50 devices at the same time, well, it's only going to

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take Ansible

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two runs to effectively automate all of the devices in the network.
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two runs to effectively automate all of the devices in the network.

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But be aware of course that will stress your CPU.

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Now again, we can see some more information right here by default.

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You can see that Ansible is going to be running from your user account.

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If you want to specify a different user name from the command line, you can use

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a dash

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u flag.

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Similarly, we can use the dash M flag, which is going to allow to specify

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different modules

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we want to use Ansible actually has a whole ecosystem of modules for particular

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tasks.

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And we'll get to look at that in more detail in an upcoming scale.

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But perhaps you want to maybe copy particular files.
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But perhaps you want to maybe copy particular files.

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You could use a copy module specified with the dash M flag.

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You just want to run some regular shell commands.

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You can use the shell module.

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There are a whole bunch of different ones available to us.

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So check this out.

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Perhaps I want to create a new directory on all of my devices as opposed to

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logging in

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via SSH one by one and doing this manually.

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What I can do is just say Ansible and then all to target the all group.

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I'll then say dash M to specify the module.

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And in this case here, I want to call the shell module.
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And in this case here, I want to call the shell module.

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I'm going to be typing a regular shell command and the argument I want to pass

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in via the dash

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A flag is simply within inverted commas.

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MKDAR.

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Let's just say forward slash TMP forward slash Ansible test.

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So if I hit enter now, we can see here we get somebody back.

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It says yellow box changed.

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And it also says blue box changed.

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This indicates that we have successfully made a change on both of those devices

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.

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So let's go and test this in.

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So let's crack open a terminal window and I will just cd enter the temp
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So let's crack open a terminal window and I will just cd enter the temp

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directory if

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I do an LS.

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Look at this right here.

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We actually do have a directory called Ansible test now right now and say to

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that directory,

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we don't have any content because we didn't create any content.

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If we so wished we could also create a file within this directory or perhaps

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even copy

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a file from one directory to another that type of thing.

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Similarly, if we go over to our other machine, the yellow box, which is full

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screen this

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go to activities terminal and we just cd enter the temp directory as well doing

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LS.

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Notice we have also created a new directory here as well.
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Notice we have also created a new directory here as well.

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Let's maybe say I wanted to say Ansible all and I will use the shell module

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once again.

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It will specify the argument is going to be and this time I will say IP adder

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to get

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the IP address information and I'm going to grep for 192.

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If I hit enter, we can quickly see within the yellow box, we have the IP

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address 192.168.135.

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And in the blue box, we have the address 192.168.160.134, easily accessing all

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the IP address information,
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the IP address information,

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all the devices within our inventory.

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Now as we're going to explore, there are a whole bunch of different Ansible

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modules.

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Let's maybe say we could use the user module, which is designed to create brand

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new users

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on the system.

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We can say -a for the arguments and all I will say is name is equal to and then

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give

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a new username, let's just say test user and I will say the state is equal to

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present.

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If I hit enter, check this out right here.

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We can see on the yellow box, we have a change and look at this information

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here.

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We have this new user.

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The name is test user, they have a home directory, they have a UID.
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The name is test user, they have a home directory, they have a UID.

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Similarly, if we go up to the blue box, also in the blue box, we have created

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this user,

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they also have a UID.

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And once again, if I so wished, I can maybe cat the Etsy group file right here

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and look

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at this right here.

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If we scroll on up, we can see all of the group information for yellow box and

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at the

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very bottom, we have the new user we just created and if we scroll up to the

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top, we

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can see the information for the blue box and just moving on down a little bit.

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We can also see the test user exists on the blue box too.
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We can also see the test user exists on the blue box too.

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Now just one thing to note, sometimes when using these commands, you might get

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erroneous

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information from Ansible.

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Quite simply, you might be told that a task has failed, even though the task

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has actually

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succeeded, let me show you what I mean.

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So let me go and pull up these devices right here.

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So clearly we can see on the right hand side, we have a blue box and yellow box

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.

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What I'm going to say here is Ansible, all and the module is going to be the

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shell module

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and the argument is going to simply be Espin, a reboot and if I hit enter, look

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on the

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right hand side, they actually are rebooting but notice the information we're
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right hand side, they actually are rebooting but notice the information we're

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getting

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back here, apparently it says the blue box is unreachable and the yellow box is

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unreachable

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failed to connect to the host via SSH.

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However, we can clearly see that the command that we sent, the reboot command,

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did indeed

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reboot both of these devices.

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So in this case here, because the actual SSH connection was disturbed due to

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the fact

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that we did reboot from an ad hoc command, Ansible falsely interpreted that as

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a failure

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in the connection, even though the task itself was indeed successful, just
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in the connection, even though the task itself was indeed successful, just

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something to be

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aware of when running these ad hoc commands.