Sequential Updates

Say you want to upgrade all the servers. Straight yum upgrade or apt update.

ansible \
  --inventory/-i [inventory] \
  [pattern] \
  --module-name/-m [command] \
  --args/-a "[module arguments]" \
  --become/-b

For example, in my inventory, I have servers grouped by OS. If I wanted to patch all the CentOS boxes sequentially, I’d run:

ansible -i inventory centos -m yum -a "name=* state=latest" -b

For a Debian server:

ansible -i inventory debian -m apt -a "upgrade=yes update_cache=yes" -b

This then upgrades all servers with that pattern sequentially. One after another. Once done, you can then reboot the servers.

ansible -i inventory centos --args "reboot" -b