Elevator Pitch
Ansible is all about simple IT automation, unless it isn’t.
Sometimes, you really need to walk the extra mile to make something work with Ansible. Let’s investigate some of these situations and how you can approach them. You might think of rollbacks, nested loops or side effect handling.
Description
With Ansible it is easy to work on “on time automation” for simple tasks. Sometimes, you will run into issues where nested looping is needed, boolean is not properly tested and side effects occur. These issues can cost a lot of time and cause frustration.
In the talk, I want to tackle some issues (within Ansible) you will face in smaller and larger setups. I will also demonstrate how I solved them and invite you to propose your solutions. Therefore, we will work on the below issues in a somewhat interactive format.
Topics
- side effect handling
- rollbacks with Ansible
- nested loops/jobs
- make dry-runs work
- doing handlers right
- testing kernel settings
Notes
In general, I don’t need any special equipment.
The talk itself is not a “slide wars” situation, but a more interactive demo with code samples and problems. I also want to involve the audience in the solution finding process.
In the past ~10 years, I am using Ansible for a wide variety of tasks from configuration to infrastructure and container management. I am also the organizer of the Ansible Meetup Dresden and involved in the Ansible community occasionally.