Chapter 4: Managing Variables and Facts

Write playbooks that use variables to simplify management, protect secrets with Ansible Vault, and use facts to reference information about managed hosts.

What you will learn

• Create and reference variables that affect particular hosts or host groups, the play, or the global environment, and describe how variable precedence works.
• Encrypt sensitive variables with Ansible Vault, and run playbooks that reference Vault-encrypted variable files.
• Reference data about managed hosts using Ansible facts, and configure custom facts on managed hosts.

Sections

1. Variables in playbooks
2. Host and group variables, and precedence
3. Exercise: Managing variables
4. Protecting secrets with Ansible Vault
5. Exercise: Managing secrets
6. Ansible facts
7. Custom facts and magic variables
8. Exercise: Managing facts
9. Exercise: Managing variables and facts
10. Ansible variables and Vault quiz
11. Ansible variables and Vault cheat sheet