Hands-On Enterprise Automation with Python

Using Ansible in ad hoc mode

Ansible ad hoc mode is used when you need to execute simple operations on remote machines, without creating complex and persistent tasks. This is where a user usually starts when they first work on Ansible, before performing advanced tasks in a playbook.

Executing the ad-hoc command requires two things. First, you will need the host or group from the inventory file; secondly, you will need the Ansible module that you want to execute towards the target machine:

1. First, let's define our hosts and add the CentOS and Ubuntu machines in a separate group:

[all:children]centos-serversubuntu-servers[centos-servers]centos-machine01 Ansible_ssh_host=10.10.10.193[ubuntu-servers]ubuntu-machine01 Ansible_ssh_host=10.10.10.140 ...