Tackling Ansible Scheduling with the `at` Command

Your manager has been told that Ansible can be used to schedule one-off tasks on multiple servers at the same time. To show this is possible, you will need to use the at module in several Ansible playbooks to manage the scheduling of a one-time task.

To do this assignment, you will make use of the at module to create a scheduled task, which will help demonstrate you know how to set up and remove a task from the list of jobs.

Using an Ansible playbook requires you to perform the following steps:

1. Create a playbook called install-at.yml that will install and start the atd service.
2. Create a playbook called at-scheduled-task.yml to perform a task (df -h > /tmp/diskspace) on the nodes set to start in 20 minutes.
3. Run the playbook, and ensure the job exists on the nodes.
4. Create a playbook called remove-at-task.yml that removes the task.
5. Run the playbook and confirm the task has been removed from the nodes.

Here are some important things to consider while completing each task:

• Ansible is already on the control node. If you connect to the server by clicking on the Public IP address in your browser, make sure to change to the ansible user with the su - ansible command.
• The ansible user is present on all servers with appropriate shared keys for access to managed servers from the control node.
• The ansible user has the same password as cloud_user.
• The default Ansible inventory has been preconfigured for you with the appropriate hosts and groups.
• /etc/hosts entries are present on control1 for the managed servers.

For detailed instructions on how to complete these tasks, click the Guide tab above the video player.