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So friends in the previous nugget we learned that we could create our own

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Ansible roles. What we would have to do though is to create them according to a

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very specific

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directory structure. That structure is what we're going to talk about right now

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. So the first thing

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to state about this particular directory structure is that the top level folder

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, i.e. the roots of

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the directory structure, that particular folder is going to be the name of the

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role itself. And

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it's going to be this name that you reference in other playbooks when you want
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it's going to be this name that you reference in other playbooks when you want

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to call that

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particular role. So let's maybe say you created a whole bunch of different

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tasks that we're going

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to maybe perhaps do some DNS updates. Okay. Now like you say this is something

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you do pretty

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regularly, fairly complex. So you wrap it up into a role and this is what it's

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called DNS

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underscore updates. Because this is what is going to be referenced in the

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actual playbook because

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that will be the name of the role. As such at the top level directory, I even

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would do it an MKD

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if we happen to create this manually, you would actually use that very

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particular naming convention,
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particular naming convention,

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the name of the role itself. And inside of that particular directory would be

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all of the subfolders

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necessary. Now I just referenced that we could actually create this directory

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structure manually,

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but quite honestly, this is not the way I happen to do this. The good news as

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we're going to learn

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is that Ansible actually has a very particular utility that is going to allow

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us to automatically

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generate the directory structure. So pretty much this will give us a nice

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little template and we

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can basically modify things as we need. One thing you will notice though is
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can basically modify things as we need. One thing you will notice though is

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that when we automatically

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generate the directory structure is going to give you all the structure that

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you may possibly need,

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meaning that if you happen to create as what we're going to do a rather simple

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role, we may actually

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have many unused directories. But hey, quite honestly, that is a trade off I'm

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willing to take. So in

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my humble opinion, this is definitely the easiest way to get us going. So we

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know the top level

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directory is going to be the name of the role. What then is actually going to

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be the subfolders?
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be the subfolders?

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Well, to answer that question, why don't we just automatically generate the

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directory structure

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and talk about what we find. So recall in the previous video, I happened to

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mention a type of

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marketplace for Ansible roles whereby you can get the roles created by more

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experienced community

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members. That particular place happened to be called Ansible Galaxy. And for

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clarity, if you so wish,

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you can absolutely publish your own roles to this particular market. But well,

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this is a kind of

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online repository for Ansible roles. This is also the actual command that we're

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going to use to
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going to use to

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generate a role structure. So check this out. I'm going to say Ansible hyphen

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galaxy. And then I

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will say a net for initialize and now I will give the name of the role that I

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want to create. So

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again, this could be absolutely any name you so wish very often a good idea

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would be to have a

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descriptive name. So maybe you would call the role create users if the whole

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purpose was to create

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user accounts that type of thing. But in this case here, I will just call the

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role CBT example.

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Okay. So if I hit enter here, notice it says the role CBT underscore example
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Okay. So if I hit enter here, notice it says the role CBT underscore example

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was created successfully.

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So if I now do an LS, here we can see the actual directory structure CBT

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example. Now, if I happen

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to say tree on that particular directory and to enter, we see all of the child

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subfolders of this

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directory, as well as a whole bunch of files. So let's work from top to bottom

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then, shall we?

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So at the very top here, we can see this folder called defaults. And inside of

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this folder, we have

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a file called main dot YML. Now the whole purpose of this particular folder
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a file called main dot YML. Now the whole purpose of this particular folder

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here is to hold well,

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no surprises, default values. But what default values are we talking about? We

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're actually talking

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about default variable values that are going to be used within the role pretty

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much you can

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conceptualize this as having some type of sensible default values. So for

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someone who is using the

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role, if they don't specify another variable of their own, they will actually

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inherit the defaults

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that you have set for them. So the whole point to note here is that these are

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very possibly and
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very possibly and

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almost even probably going to be overwritten in some forum. That really has the

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whole purpose of

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that particular file within the defaults folder. Now the next one we actually

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see here is one

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folder called files. Okay, now right now, as we can see, there is nothing

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actually inside of this

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directory. It's just completely empty. The whole purpose therefore of this

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particular directory

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is that it is a place that you can house your static files that are going to be

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used by the

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tasks within the role. So what's going to be saying here is your Ansible

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control mode right here.

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Let me just draw this out. And let's maybe have a managed device here. So it's
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Let me just draw this out. And let's maybe have a managed device here. So it's

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a device one.

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And let's say device number two, again, there could be many more devices you

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happen to be managing.

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And suppose you happen to have a file that exists on the Ansible control mode,

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and you want to be

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able to push that particular file to the managed nodes over here. Okay, that

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static file that exists

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on the control node that you want to be present on the targets when you are

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using roles, the place

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whereby you would define that particular file would be in that files folder.

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And in fact, this

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is something that Ansible is going to expect. So when you happen to define a
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is something that Ansible is going to expect. So when you happen to define a

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particular file in

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this particular folder, when using a role, you don't actually have to give the

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absolute path to

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locate that particular file. And did instead, Ansible, like I say, is going to

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expect that

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file to be in that folder and it will automatically check for its existence

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there. So basically,

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you can just put the file in that particular folder and just reference the file

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name itself.

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Now the next one here is something called handlers. And we can see we actually

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have a main.YML

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file within that directory. Now we actually haven't talked about handlers quite
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file within that directory. Now we actually haven't talked about handlers quite

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just yet.

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We'll get to that in an upcoming skill. But as a high level overview, pretty

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much,

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it's a special type of Ansible task that will actually execute depending on the

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outcome of

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another Ansible task, basically when a particular condition has been met. Again

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, like I say,

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we'll get to look at those in more detail later on within this course. Then we

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come to the next

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directory, which is the meta directory. And again, inside of that particular

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file, we can see we

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have a main.YML. The purpose of this particular file is really well just to
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have a main.YML. The purpose of this particular file is really well just to

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specify the metadata

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associated with the role. So the type of thing that you would specify would be

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perhaps who actually

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authored the role, what was the date and which it was created, what type of

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licensing do you

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have for this particular role? Is it free for anyone to use? Maybe you want to

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specify the

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particular dependencies that have to be installed in order for the role to

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greatly operate. All of

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that you can define in that main.YML file within the meta directory. Now the

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next

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one we come to is the readme.md. This is a markdown file. Now if you happen to
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one we come to is the readme.md. This is a markdown file. Now if you happen to

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have experience with

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version control and something known as get or get up, you will probably

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recognize this particular

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file readme as a kind of instruction about how to use the particular utility.

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So in this case here,

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if you want to tell people how to actually use the role, what its purpose is,

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how they should

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modify particular values, as well as what they shouldn't use the role for, you

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would specify

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all of those instructions inside of the readme markdown file. Now the next one,

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this one is
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this one is

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probably very, very recognizable. This is the tasks folder and inside of the

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task folder,

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once again, we have a main.YML file. Now the purpose of this particular file,

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you guessed it.

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This is where you define the tasks that the role is going to perform. So really

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, this particular

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folder is very, very important. It's one of the core components of the Ansible

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role itself. We'll

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definitely get to see this later on within this particular skill. Next, we come

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to a directory

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known as templates. Now you might have a good idea what this one is all about.
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known as templates. Now you might have a good idea what this one is all about.

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We just discussed

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templates in the previous skill. This is where we could specify our Ginger 2

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templates, which

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would be used to effectively render configurations that we would like to push

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onto our target devices.

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So maybe you want to perhaps templatize your, oh I don't know, let's say, etsy

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resolve.conf

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configuration file, because imagine in this particular role, we're going to be

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doing some type of

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DNS config. Where are you going to put that particular template file? You're

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going to put it

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directly within this particular folder right here. Now one thing to note is
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directly within this particular folder right here. Now one thing to note is

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that if we happen to do

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an LS right now, notice we already have a templates directory here. That's a

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lowercase t. This is

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where we created our prior Ansible templates. Now when we happen to utilize a

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role called within a

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playbook, this is not the folder that the role is going to look into. The role

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is going to look into

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this particular one which is housed, like I said again inside of that top level

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directory, the name

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of the role itself. So just do not get that confused. The next thing we come to
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of the role itself. So just do not get that confused. The next thing we come to

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is the tests

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folder and inside of here, we can actually see we have two particular files.

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One is called

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inventory and the other one is called test.yml. Now this one might seem a

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little bit peculiar. Why

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do we have a file called inventory? After all, we already have an Ansible

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inventory defined.

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But the whole purpose of this particular folder here is to run tests. So inside

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of the test.yml

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file, this is where you would define all of your tests. But think about it. If

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you're going to be

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testing things out, is it a very smart idea to test out things that might
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testing things out, is it a very smart idea to test out things that might

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happen to break

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against your real live production network? The real servers that your entire

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workforce is

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relying upon? Absolutely not. So in this case here, we are providing a second

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inventory which is going

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to be comprised of a whole bunch of mock devices, pretty much maybe some

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virtual machines, whatever

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it may be, somewhere whereby we can safely test out these new conflicts as the

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configuration going

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to be rendered correctly, as the status of the service going to be as expected.
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to be rendered correctly, as the status of the service going to be as expected.

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The best way to

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test that out is against a test network. That is the whole purpose of that

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inventory file.

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And then lastly, we come to this varsity rate to the inside of here. Once again

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, we have a main

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dot yaml file. And this is really quite similar to the very first directory we

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talked about. The

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name itself is giving us a little bit of a hints. This is where we define our

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variable values. Now,

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the difference here is that this is where we should define our specific values,

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the values that we

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would like to use if the default values do not suffice. Basically, if you want
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would like to use if the default values do not suffice. Basically, if you want

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to override the

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defaults, we want to define those values inside of this particular file right

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here. And they will

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be treated with a higher priority by Ansible if there happens to be a conflict

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with anything in

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the defaults folder. So I know that was a lot of information to get to within

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this particular

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video. But really, that is everything that we have to know about the directory

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structure of the

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Ansible role. With that said, how about we begin creating our very first Ans

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ible role and well,

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that's what we're doing in the very next video.
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that's what we're doing in the very next video.