Create Local Groups on Windows with Ansible Playbooks — Video Tutorial

How to Create a local group on Windows-like systems with Ansible? I'm going to show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code. I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot. Ansible creates a local group on Windows-like systems - `ansible.windows.win_group` - Add or remove groups Today we're talking about the Ansible module `win_group`. The full name is `ansible.windows.win_group`, which means that is part of the collection of modules specialized to interact with Windows target host. It's a module pretty stable and out for years. It works in Windows and Windows Server operating systems. It adds and removes local groups. For Linux target use the `group` module instead. Parameters - name string - group name - state string - present/absent - description string - description of the group This module has some parameters to perform some tasks. The only required is "name", which is the group name. The "state" parameter allows us to create or delete a group, in our use case the default it's already set to "present" to create a group. The "description" parameter allows you to specify a description of the group, it's not mandatory but sometimes is useful. Links - [ansible.windows.win_group](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/windows/win_group_module.html) ## Playbook How to Create a local group on Windows-like systems with Ansible Playbook. I’m going to show you how to automate the creation of the “example” group on my Playbook Windows machine. code ```yaml --- - name: windows group add hosts: all vars: grp_name: 'accounting' grp_description: 'accounting group' tasks: - name: Create a new group ansible.windows.win_group: name: "{{ grp_name }}" description: "{{ grp_description }}" state: present ``` execution ```bash ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/win/inventory windows/group_add.yml PLAY [windows group add] ************************************************************************** TASK [Gathering Facts] **************************************************************************** ok: [WindowsServer] TASK [Create a new group] ************************************************************************* changed: [WindowsServer] PLAY RECAP **************************************************************************************** WindowsServer : ok=2 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 ansible-pilot $ ``` idempotency ```bash ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/win/inventory windows/group_add.yml PLAY [windows group add] ************************************************************************** TASK [Gathering Facts] **************************************************************************** ok: [WindowsServer] TASK [Create a new group] ************************************************************************* ok: [WindowsServer] PLAY RECAP *********************