Ansible Automation Case Studies & Practical Application 3

Question 1

A company's CI/CD pipeline must apply Ansible playbooks automatically on every code merge. Credentials must not be stored in the pipeline config. What is the best approach?

Accepted Answer

Use Ansible Tower/AWX with machine credentials stored in its credential store

Answer

Ansible Tower/AWX provides a secure credential store that injects credentials at runtime without exposing them to the pipeline configuration.

Question 2

An Ansible role is being reused across projects, but each project needs slightly different default values. Where should defaults be placed so they can be easily overridden?

Accepted Answer

In the role's defaults/main.yml file

Answer

defaults/main.yml has the lowest variable precedence in Ansible, making it easy for playbooks or inventory variables to override role defaults.

Question 3

A playbook needs to iterate over a list of users and create a home directory for each. Which Ansible construct is most appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Using with_items or loop with the user module

Answer

loop (or legacy with_items) iterates the user module over each element in the list, creating all home directories in a single task definition.

Question 4

After a failed playbook run that partially configured servers, an engineer re-runs it and some tasks fail because they attempt to recreate already-existing resources. What Ansible design principle would have prevented this?

Accepted Answer

Writing idempotent tasks using Ansible modules instead of raw shell commands

Answer

Idempotent tasks check current state before making changes, so re-running a playbook produces the same result without failing on already-applied changes.

Question 5

A team wants to verify that their Ansible roles meet quality standards before merging to main. Which tool is specifically designed to lint Ansible playbooks and roles?

Accepted Answer

ansible-lint

Answer

ansible-lint checks playbooks and roles against a set of Ansible-specific best practice rules beyond basic YAML syntax.

Ansible Automation Practice Test

Ansible Automation Practice Test

Ansible Automation Case Studies & Practical Application 3