Lab: Ansible provisioning and snapshots

What you will learn in this TP

• Write a provisioning playbook
• Use ansible_local
• Protect experiments with a snapshot

Local Ansible #

What you will learn in this section

• Write a provisioning playbook
• Use ansible_local
• Protect experiments with a snapshot

Context. Shell provisioning scripts quickly become unreadable. Using Ansible as the provisioner provides a declarative language, reusable later in production, and snapshots let you experiment without fear of breaking everything.

Prerequisites: Previous labs, Ansible basics  ·  Estimated time: 40 min

Provision without installing Ansible on the host.

1. 1. Write a playbook

   Why? A playbook describes the desired state (nginx installed and started) rather than commands: it can be reread and replayed without side effects.

   Create provision/site.yml that installs nginx and publishes a home page.

2. 2. Wire the provisioner

   Why? Local mode installs Ansible inside the VM: no host prerequisites, so it works the same on Linux, macOS and Windows.

   Use the ansible_local provisioner (Ansible is installed inside the VM).

3. 3. Snapshots before a risky change

   Why? A snapshot is a near-instant restore point: it lets you test a risky operation and return in seconds.

   Take a snapshot, deliberately break nginx then restore.

4. 4. Check idempotency

   Why? A second run with no change must show changed=0; that is the criterion proving the playbook is idempotent.

   Re-run provisioning: how many tasks are changed?

Difficulty level : ●●●○○ (3/5)