Playbooks

A playbook is the heart of Ansible automation. While ad-hoc commands handle one-off tasks, playbooks let you define complex, multi-step workflows in a structured, repeatable, and version-controlled YAML file.

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What is a Playbook?

A playbook is a YAML file containing one or more plays. Each play maps a group of hosts to a set of tasks to be executed.

Playbook
+-- Play 1 (hosts: webservers)
|   +-- Task 1
|   +-- Task 2
|   +-- Task 3
+-- Play 2 (hosts: dbservers)
    +-- Task 1
    +-- Task 2

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YAML Basics for Ansible

Key Rules

• Use spaces for indentation (never tabs)
• Standard indentation is 2 spaces
• Lists use a dash and space (- )
• Key-value pairs use colon and space (: )
• Strings usually do not need quotes (but use them for special characters)

# A list
fruits:
  - apple
  - banana
  - cherry

# A dictionary
server:
  name: web1
  port: 80
  enabled: true

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Playbook Structure

A Minimal Playbook

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- name: Configure web servers
  hosts: webservers
  become: true