Ansible Basics: Copy, Command, and Backup Operations with Practical Examples

Ansible is built on Paramiko and provides a modular, agent‑less framework for batch deployment, configuration, and command execution by communicating over SSH; it is developed in Python and has been acquired by Red Hat.

[root@mha ~]# ansible web -m copy -a 'src=/root/a.sh dest=/tmp/'

This command copies the file a.sh from the control node to /tmp/ on all hosts in the web inventory group. [root@mha ~]# ansible web -m command -a 'ls /tmp/' Runs the ls /tmp/ command on the same hosts, showing the copied file.

[root@mha ~]# ansible web -m copy -a 'src=/root/file.txt  owner=root group=root dest=/tmp/file.txt  backup=yes'

Copies file.txt to /tmp/ with ownership set to root and enables backup of the destination file.

[root@mha ansible]# ansible web -m copy -a 'src=/etc/ansible/roles dest=/tmp/ backup=yes'

Copies the entire /etc/ansible/roles directory to /tmp/ on each target, creating backups; the output shows a CHANGED status with details of the source and destination paths for each host. [root@mha ansible]# ansible web -m shell -a 'ls -lrth /tmp/' Executes a shell command to list the contents of /tmp/ in long format, confirming that the files were transferred successfully.

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Recommended reading:

1. Ansible Detailed User Module

2. K8s Pod Resource Manifest Writing

3. Prometheus Service Discovery

4. Prometheus Monitoring Implementation – Practical Guide

5. Conditional Syntax in Playbooks