Step 1: Update Your System

Before installing Ansible, ensure your system is up to date. Run the following commands:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Keeping your system updated is crucial for security and performance, whether you're setting it up locally or on a VPS Windows Servers platform.

Step 2: Install Ansible

Ansible can be installed directly from the default Ubuntu repositories. To install Ansible, run:

sudo apt install ansible -y

This command will download and install Ansible along with its dependencies.

Step 3: Verify the Installation

To confirm that Ansible is installed correctly, you can check the version by running:

ansible --version

You should see the installed version of Ansible displayed in the terminal.

Step 4: Configure Ansible Hosts

By default, Ansible uses the /etc/ansible/hosts file to manage host configurations. Open this file for editing:

sudo nano /etc/ansible/hosts

Add your managed nodes to this file. Here’s an example of how to define a group of hosts:

[webservers]
192.168.1.10
192.168.1.11
            

Replace the IP addresses with those of your managed nodes.

Step 5: Test Ansible Connectivity

You can test the connectivity to your managed nodes by using the following command:

ansible all -m ping

This command will attempt to ping all hosts defined in your Ansible inventory. If everything is configured correctly, you should receive a pong response from each host.

Step 6: Create an Ansible Playbook (Optional)

You can create Ansible playbooks to automate tasks. Create a simple playbook file:

nano my_playbook.yml

Here’s an example of a basic playbook that installs Apache on the web servers:

- hosts: webservers
  tasks:
    - name: Install Apache
      apt:
        name: apache2
        state: present
            

Step 7: Run the Playbook

You can execute the playbook by running the following command:

ansible-playbook my_playbook.yml

This command will connect to all the hosts in the webservers group and install Apache.