How to use an Ansible Vault in an Ansible Playbook? How to use an Ansible Vault to Protect Sensitive Data such as passwords, access keys, etc. I will show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code. I'm Luca Berton, and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot. Ansible Vault - Included in Ansible installation - `ansible-vault` command line Ansible Vault is included in every Ansible installation for the most modern operating system. It includes all the software encryption and a handy command line utility (`ansible-vault`) to encrypt, modify, change passwords or decrypt files. The encryption of the Ansible Vault files is strong and relies on the AES256 cipher. Links - https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/vault.html Playbook Use Ansible Vault in Ansible Playbook I will show you how to use Ansible Vault in Ansible Playbook to store passwords. This example uses a simple playbook that displays on screen a variable and one Ansible vault to store the variable encrypted on disk. In the real world, you can use the variable with any Ansible module without printing on the screen. code without Vault - playbook_without_vault.yml ```yaml --- - name: Playbook without Vault hosts: all vars: mypassword: mysupersecretpassword tasks: - name: print variable ansible.builtin.debug: var: mypassword ``` execution without Vault ```bash $ ansible-playbook -i inventory playbook_without_vault.yml PLAY [Playbook without Vault] *********************************************************** TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************** [WARNING]: Platform darwin on host demo.example.com is using the discovered Python interpreter at /opt/homebrew/bin/python3.10, but future installation of another Python interpreter could change the meaning of that path. See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible- core/2.13/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html for more information. ok: [ demo.example.com] TASK [print variable] ******************************************************************* ok: [ demo.example.com] => { "mypassword": "mysupersecretpassword" } PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************** demo.example.com : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0 ``` code with Vault - playbook_with_vault.yml ```bash --- - name: Playbook with Vault hosts: all tasks: - name: include vault ansible.builtin.include_vars: file: mypassword.yml - name: print variable ansible.builtin.debug: var: mypassword ``` - mypassword.yml ```bash $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256 35623739386664386238326639623130343635396432393037383666306431623833666266623730 3431326532383363303333336636366338313730613733360a616466373932623131626632613737 66326237653963613031326464353066346161666265623939643235396563646236613566643230 3630393737373765370a613331363034