Ansible can help you automate just about all of your daily IT tasks, from mundane tasks, such as applying patches or deploying configuration files, to deploying entirely new infrastructure as code. The use of, and engagement with, Ansible has been growing year by year as more and more people come to realize both its power and simplicity. You will find many example Ansible playbooks, roles, blog articles, and so on across the internet, and combined with resources such as this book, you will become proficient at writing your own Ansible playbooks.

Yet, how do you know what the best approaches for writing your automation code in Ansible are? How can you tell whether an example you found on the internet is actually a good way of doing things? In this chapter, we will take you through a practical guide of the best practices in Ansible, showing you what is currently...