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Ansible Best Practices for Perun Deployment

Terminology

The basic unit of work in Ansible is called a task, which is implemented by a module. There are many modules readily available (see list of all Ansible modules), the most used are:

• debug - prints debug messages
• assert - checks required conditions
• file - creates, removes, detects; files, directories, symlinks, hardlinks
• copy - copies a file
• template - creates a file from a template by inserting values of variables
• lineinfile - edits or creates a line in a text file
• blockinfile - edits or creates a block of multiple lines in a text file
• package - installs, upgrades or removes software packages
• systemd - manages systemd services

A series of tasks performed to fulfill some purpose is called a role. Roles can be reused, a role should be kept in a separate git repository (with name prefixed with ansible-role-) and published in Ansible Galaxy. We have a few of them:

• role cesnet.itfg_cas in repo https://github.com/CESNET/ansible-role-igtf-cas
• role cesnet.apache_tls in repo https://github.com/CESNET/ansible-role-apache-tls
• role cesnet.metacentrum_monitoring in repo https://github.com/CESNET/ansible-role-metacentrum-monitoring
• role cesnet.unattended_upgrades in repo https://github.com/CESNET/ansible-role-unattended-upgrades

A collection of roles and tasks together with list of hosts is called a play. A set of plays is called a playbook.