Tags.md

LAB: Adding Tags

Tags are useful when we want to run specific part of the playbook. If we tagged with specific keywords, only tagged part would run.

This scenario shows:

• how to add tags and run according to specific tags

Prerequisite

• You should have a look following lab, nodes that are created in that LAB, are using in ansible commands
  • LAB: Multipass-SSH Configuration (Create Ansible Test Environment)

Steps

• Tags are added with "tags" keyword. "tags: Always" run always, other tags could be custom defined (e.g. apache, mariadb, etc.)

---

- hosts: all
  become: true
  pre_tasks:

  - name: install updates (CentOS)
    tags: always
    dnf:
      update_only: yes
      update_cache: yes
    when: ansible_distribution == "CentOS"

  - name: install updates (Ubuntu)
    tags: always
    apt:
      upgrade: dist
      update_cache: yes
    when: ansible_distribution == "Ubuntu"

- hosts: web_servers
  become: true
  tasks:

  - name: install apache and php (CentOS)
    tags: centos,apache,httpd
    dnf:
      name:
        - httpd
        - php
      state: latest
    when: ansible_distribution == "CentOS"

  - name: install apache and php (Ubuntu)
    tags: ubuntu,apache,apache2
    apt:
      name:
        - apache2
        - libapache2-mod-php
      state: latest
    when: ansible_distribution == "Ubuntu"
    
- hosts: database_servers
  become: true
  tasks:

  - name: install MariaDB (CentOS)
    tags: centos,db,mariadb
    dnf:
      name: mariadb
      state: latest
    when: ansible_distribution == "CentOS"

  - name: install MariaDB (Ubuntu)
    tags: ubuntu,db,mariadb-server
    apt:
      name: mariadb-server
      state: latest
    when: ansible_distribution == "Ubuntu"

• To see the defined tags, run following:

ansible-playbook --list-tags site.yml

• When we want to run only tasks which contains 'Ubuntu' tag, run following:

ansible-playbook --tags ubuntu --ask-become-pass site.yml

• It can be seen below, only 'ubuntu' tagged tasks and 'always' tagged tasks were run. "Gathering Facts" always run to collect server data.

• When we want to run only tasks which contains 'db' tag, run following:

ansible-playbook --tags db --ask-become-pass site.yml

• It can be seen below, only 'db' tagged tasks and 'always' tagged tasks were run.

• When we want to run only tasks which contains 'always' tag, run following:

ansible-playbook --tags always --ask-become-pass site.yml