Ansible tips&tricks
In this site you will find much of the documentation that I collected
over the years. This is by no means a "We say so" document.
I have worked in a number of organizations implementing ansible and
automation platform, this is my personal view on "How I would do this".
Yust writing all knowledge down helps me to burn it into my braincells.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I did writing and learning it.
Enjoy..
Build an enterprise grade lab on your local computer
Learn how to setup a lab that can test your code like it was in the enterprise, just follow these steps.
Lab on virtualbox
Build a homelab to run it all
Follow me as I build a homelab on a mini PC using Proxmox.
Lab on proxmox
GitOps explaned
Always wanted to know about GitOps?
Read on..
Gitops automation
Config as Code automation platform 2.4
Everything and more you need to know about config as code for ansible automation platform 2.4. never lose your configuration again!
Config as code rhaap 2.4
Config as Code Automation Platform 2.5
Description of a possible solution for configuration as code for ansible automation platform 2.5.
Config as Code rhaap 2.5
Config as Code Automation Platform 2.6 (!Read the message)
Description of a possible solution for configuration as code for ansible automation platform 2.6.
Config as Code rhaap 2.6
Upgrade Config as Code from 2.5 to 2.6
Description of the changes for upgrading form rhaap 2.5 to configuration as code for ansible automation platform 2.6.
Upgrade CaC for Automation Platform 2.5 to 2.6
Example EDA project
Description of a functional EDA project in combination with configuration as code.
Example EDA project
Inventory construction documentation
Curious how to build an inventory?
Here it is...
Inventory construction
Naming convention Ansible
What's to know about naming conventions, I've got mine here
naming_convention
Infrastructure as Code
Howto create infrastructure as Code, a guide to buildingblocks Infrastructure As Code
This site is (since 01-01-2026), hosted on virtual machines, created with ansible code, running on
automation platform. The site is now running on 3 linux containers(LXC on proxmox) with nginx, load balanced in a pool through a nginx proxy.
The whole setup is created using ansible and the site is deployed through a gitlab pipeline.
All in line with the automation principals.
The playbooks used for this installation, will be added later.
Testplan template (not testing playbook, but the result!)
When you are confident about your code (linting, syntax_check), are you just as sure about the result?
Testplan
Optimizing ansible playbooks
Some correct syntax in ansible may take a long time to execute, check here for optimizations
Optimizing ansible
Trigger a job_template from curl in AAP
Why go through the trouble creating webhooks, when it can be so simple..
trigger_aap
This site is still a work in progress, check us regularly for updates.. There is much to be added..
version:
updated: 19-02-2026
update:
Revised the optimizations for lists and dicts, the previous version was no longer valid in ansible 2.19.
The new versions for list and dict creation are now valid for ansible 2.19
updated: 16-02-2026
update:
Updated the delete organization playbooks to the new secrets standard with an external vault.
Updated the delete organization playbooks for better performance.
updated: 13-02-2026
update:
Updated the create organization playbooks to the new secrets standard with an external vault.
updated: 11-02-2026
update:
Removed vaulted credentials in favour of external vault, only eda remains
updated: 10-02-2026
update:
Added "first steps" to make it easier to understand
Removed release rhaap 2.6-4 and installed rhaap 2.6-5 for testing
updated: 09-02-2026
update:
Updated secrets vault description
updated: 06-02-2026
update:
Updated secrets vault description
updated: 03-02-2026
update:
Automated (this) site deployment
Updated secrets vault description
Updated building execution environments
New update of the automation platform has been released (2.6-5) soon to be tested
updated: 24-01-2026
update:
Minor typo corrections
updated: 22-01-2026
update:
Improved external vault credentials setup in the base configuration
Updated ansible key security definition
updated: 21-01-2026
update:
Added external vault credentials setup to the base configuration