Write Ansible playbooks that are idempotent, readable, and maintainable for config management.

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Ansible and Infrastructure as Code: Idempotency and Best Practices

Ansible is a strong choice for config management and ad-hoc automation. Use these practices to keep playbooks safe and maintainable.

Idempotency #

Modules are designed to be idempotent; prefer ansible.builtin modules over command/ shell when possible.
command/shell: Use creates or removes to make the step idempotent, or check state in a prior task.

yaml.yaml

- name: Ensure package installed
  ansible.builtin.apt:
    name: nginx
    state: present

- name: Ensure config present
  ansible.builtin.template:
    src: app.conf.j2
    dest: /etc/app/app.conf
    notify: restart app