# Introducing roles

## Overview

In this example, we will take a quick digression to look at [Ansible Roles](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest//playbook_guide/playbooks_reuse_roles.html) and how they can be used to make your code more reusable.

As roles are a core feature of Ansible — i.e. they are completely independent of the IONOS Core Ansible Module — we won't go into any explanation of their structure or how to create them (though a few useful references are mentioned at the bottom of this document); rather, this is more about providing an example that you can look at and (potentially) use as a starting point for some of your own sample projects.

## Before you begin

If you're not already familiar with the concepts of roles, you might want to look at the [Ansible Roles](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/playbook_guide/playbooks_reuse_roles.html) section of the official documentation before continuing with the rest of this tutorial.

### What's in this example?

This example includes and/or depends on the following files:

| File                      | Description                                                                                                                    |
| ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `part-1.yml`              | This playbook provisions a single server and creates a few temporary files that are used by the subsequent playbooks           |
| `part-2.yml`              | This playbook runs *on* the newly-provisioned server and applies a few roles to this VM                                        |
| `part-3.yml`              | This playbook cleans up all of the resources provisioned in Part 1, and should be run, once you're done with the earlier parts |
| `vars.yml`                | This file contains the variable definitions common to `part-1.yml`, `part-2.yml` and `part-3.yml`                              |
| `../vars.yml`             | This file is common to all of our Ansible examples and contains a set of more generally-used variable definitions              |
| `templates/ssh_config.j2` | A simple Jinja template, in this case, to dynamically create the `ssh_config` file mentioned above                             |
| `roles/`                  | A set simple, unofficial but usable roles that will be used in this example, and which you cold look at and/or edit            |

## Usage

1. To provision our 'starting' infrastructure, run the following command:

   ```
   ansible-playbook part-1.yml
   ```
2. To execute the 'meat' of this example, run the following command (possibly after enabling `verbose_debugging` — see below):

   ```
   ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml part-2.yml
   ```
3. Optionally, examine the outputs of the previous step; to ssh into the VM, type the following *from the same directory in another shell*:

   ```
   ssh -F ssh_config example-server
   ```
4. Execute the following to delete the resources provisioned in the previous steps:

   ```
   ansible-playbook part-3.yml
   ```

## Resources and references

* Ansible Documentation. Using Ansible playbooks / Working with playbooks / Roles. Available from [docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest//playbook\_guide/playbooks\_reuse\_roles.html](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/playbook_guide/playbooks_reuse_roles.html)
* Ansible Documentation. Galaxy User Guide / Installing roles from Galaxy. Available from [docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/galaxy/user\_guide.html#installing-roles-from-galaxy](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/galaxy/user_guide.html#installing-roles-from-galaxy)
* Red Hat, Enable Sysadmin (April 2021). 8 Steps to developing an Ansible Role in Linux. Retrieved from [https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/developing-ansible-role](https://github.com/ionos-cloud/module-ansible/blob/master/docs/tutorials/05__introducing_roles/redhat.com/sysadmin/developing-ansible-role/README.md) on 17 May 2023.


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