Chapter 1. Ansible terminology

The chapters in this title use the official Ansible terminology. If you are not familiar with the terminology, read the official Ansible upstream documentation before proceeding, especially the following sections:

  • The Basic concepts in Ansible section provides an overview of the most commonly used concepts in Ansible.
  • The User guide outlines the most common situations and questions when starting to use Ansible, such as using the command line; working with an inventory; interacting with data; writing tasks, plays, and playbooks; and executing playbooks.
  • How to build your inventory offers tips on how to design your inventory. An inventory is a list or a group of lists that Ansible uses to work against multiple managed nodes or hosts in your infrastructure.
  • Intro to playbooks introduces the concept of an Ansible playbook as a repeatable and re-usable system for managing configurations, deploying machines, and deploying complex applications.
  • The Ansible roles section explains how to automate loading variables, tasks, and handlers based on a known file structure.
  • The Glossary explains terms that are used elsewhere in the Ansible documentation.