Mastering Ansible - Second Edition

Module transport and execution

Once a playbook is parsed and the hosts are determined, Ansible is ready to execute a task. Tasks are made up of a name (optional, but please don't skip it), a module reference, module arguments, and task control directives. A later chapter will cover task control directives in detail, so we will only concern ourselves with the module reference and arguments.

Module reference

Every task has a module reference. This tells Ansible which bit of work to do. Ansible is designed to easily allow for custom modules to live alongside a playbook. These custom modules can be a wholly new functionality, or it can replace modules shipped with Ansible itself. When Ansible parses a task and discovers the name of the module to use ...