Ansible Installation and Configuration on Ubuntu — Automate Your Server Management

Introduction

What is Ansible?

Ansible is an automation language that can describe any IT environment, whether homelab or large-scale infrastructure. It is easy to learn and reads like clear documentation.

If you manage multiple servers and find yourself doing the same configuration over and over — setting up SSH keys, disabling root users, configuring firewalls — Ansible can automate the entire process and dramatically increase your productivity.

It only requires Ansible on the Control Node and Python 3 on the Managed Node.

What is the Control Node?

The system that Ansible is installed on — it controls the remote machines.

What is the Managed Node?

The remote system or host that Ansible controls. Ansible is agentless, meaning you don't need to install Ansible on managed nodes — just Python 3.

Installing Ansible on Ubuntu (Control Node)

sudo apt update

sudo apt install software-properties-common

sudo add-apt-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible

sudo apt install ansible

Note: Ensure Python 3 is installed on your remote server. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ships with Python 3 by default.

Create the Inventory Folder and Hosts File

The hosts file maps the remote machines you want to control.

Folder structure:

Ansible/

├── inventory/

│ └── hosts

└── playbooks/

└── apt-update.yml

inventory/hosts

[servers]

vpsServer ansible_host=10.10.100.45

work-ToRule

10.10.45.62

You can give hosts an alias by pairing a name with an IP address. In the example above, vpsServer is an alias for 10.10.100.45.

Your First Playbook — Update Ubuntu and Set Timezone

Create playbooks/apt-update.yml:

- hosts: '*'

  become: true

  serial: 1

  tasks:

    - name: Set system timezone to Trinidad and Tobago time

      community.general.timezone:

        name: America/Port_of_Spain



    - name: Update apt cache

      apt:

        update_cache: yes

        cache_valid_time: 3600



    - name: Upgrade all packages to the latest version

      apt:

        upgrade: dist



    - name: Check if reboot is required

      stat:

        path: /var/run/reboot-required

      register: reboot_required_file



    - name: Reboot the server

      reboot:

        msg: 'Reboot initiated by Ansible due to package upgrades'

        connect_timeout: 5

        reboot_timeout: 300

        pre_reboot_delay: 0

        post_reboot_delay: 30

      when: reboot_required_file.stat.exists

Breaking Down the Playbook

Each task has four parts:

• 
  name — a plain-text description of what the task does


• 
  Collection (community.general) — the Ansible content bundle the module belongs to


• 
  Module (timezone, apt, reboot) — the tool that executes the action


• 
  Parameters (name: America/Port_of_Spain) — the specific options passed to the module

📚 Browse all available modules and collections at docs.ansible.com

Running the Playbook

Step 1 — Test connectivity with a ping

ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=FALSE ansible -i ./inventory/hosts vpsServer -m ping --user root --ask-pass

Once you get a green pong response, you're ready to run the playbook.

Step 2 — Run the playbook

ansible-playbook ./playbooks/apt-update.yml --user root -e "ansible_port=22" --ask-pass --ask-become-pass -i ./inventory/hosts

Execution Flow

1. Ansible reads ./inventory/hosts to find the target server's IP


2. Prompts for SSH password


3. Prompts for sudo password


4. Connects to port 22 as root


5. Opens apt-update.yml and executes each task in order

Conclusion

A big shout-out to Aldo @aldo_cve for recommending Ansible in a previous post — it's been a great addition to my server management workflow.

I hope you found this walkthrough useful. Stay tuned for more posts where I share playbooks I find useful in my day-to-day infrastructure work.

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