Using Ansible Modules to Manage Services in Your Environment

15 minutes
  • 2 Learning Objectives

About this Hands-on Lab

Connecting to a single server to restart a service is tedious. Now imagine having to do it on a hundred servers. That kind of task is what tools like Ansible are great at. This lab will help reinforce some of the lesson on managing services.

*This course is not approved or sponsored by Red Hat.*

Learning Objectives

Successfully complete this lab by achieving the following learning objectives:

Start httpd on the Clients in the webserver Group

Create and edit services.yml, and add a section to start httpd. The block will look like this:

---
- name: Start httpd
  hosts: webservers
  become: yes

  tasks:
  - service:
     name: httpd
     state: started
     enabled: yes
Start PostgreSQL on Clients in the dbservers and adminservers Groups

Edit services.yml further and add a section to start PostgreSQL. Because the services need to start asynchronously, we have to use the systemd module:

- name: Start postgresql
  hosts: dbservers:admins
  become: yes

  tasks:
  - systemd:
     name: postgresql
     state: started
     no_block: yes

Additional Resources

Notice: Ansible is installed as the root user, so please work on all tasks after elevating to the root user.

There are reports of some servers not starting their required services when they rebooting after getting patches last night. Our task is to ensure all postgresql and httpd services are started and enabled throughout the environment. Web servers do not have PostgreSQL installed, while database and administrative servers do. Web servers only have httpd installed.

In addition, because the databases sometimes take a significant amount of time to start, we've been asked to make sure these restarts are asynchronous.

What are Hands-on Labs

Hands-on Labs are real environments created by industry experts to help you learn. These environments help you gain knowledge and experience, practice without compromising your system, test without risk, destroy without fear, and let you learn from your mistakes. Hands-on Labs: practice your skills before delivering in the real world.

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