Ansible Playbook Structure and Variables Flashcards

Which YAML key is used at the top level of an Ansible playbook to define which hosts the play targets?

Answer: hosts

The 'hosts' key at the top level of a play specifies which hosts or groups from inventory the play will run against.

What is the correct way to define a variable inline within a playbook using the 'vars' block?

Answer: vars:\n my_var: value

The 'vars' block is the standard way to define play-level variables directly within a playbook.

In Ansible variable precedence, which variable type has the highest priority and overrides all others?

Answer: Extra vars passed with -e on the command line

Extra variables passed via '-e' or '--extra-vars' on the command line have the highest precedence in Ansible's variable hierarchy.

What Ansible module is commonly used to include a variable file into a playbook at runtime?

Answer: include_vars

'include_vars' dynamically loads variables from a file during task execution, allowing conditional variable loading.

What does the 'gather_facts: false' setting in a playbook do?

Answer: Skips the automatic collection of system information from managed hosts

Setting 'gather_facts: false' disables the implicit 'setup' module call that collects host facts, speeding up playbooks that don't need system information.

Which Jinja2 filter would you use to set a default value for a variable that might be undefined in an Ansible template?

Answer: {{ my_var | default('fallback') }}

The 'default' Jinja2 filter provides a fallback value when the variable is undefined or empty.