Welcome to Practical Ansible 2, your guide to going from beginner to proficient Ansible automation engineer in a matter of a few chapters. This book will provide you with the knowledge and skills required to perform your very first installation and automation tasks with Ansible, and take you on a journey from simple one-line automation commands that perform single tasks, all the way through to writing your own complex custom code to extend the functionality of Ansible, and even automate cloud and container infrastructures. Throughout the book, practical examples will be given for you to not just read about Ansible automation, but actually try it out for yourself and understand how the code works. You will then be well placed to automate your infrastructure with Ansible in a manner that is scalable, repeatable, and reliable.