In this blog, post, I will show you how to manage Windows server services with Ansible.
In the last few blog post about Ansible, I have shown you the following:
I recommend you review the above posts.
Services
When it comes to Windows services, we manage them using the win_service module.
The module allows us to do the following:
- Set the start mode
- Set the state of the service
- Control user, path and dependencies
Set Service State
In the below code, I am setting the state of the w32time service to stop from its default start mode (restarted).
—
– hosts: windows
tasks:
– name: start service
win_service:
name: w32time
state: stopped
The options that we have are, Absent, pushed, started, stopped, restarted.
I strongly recommend you do not use absent because it will delete the service from the OS and the only way to get it back it to register a new service.
Set Start mode
To set the start mode, to a manual I will use the following code:
—
– hosts: windows
tasks:
– name: start service
win_service:
name: w32time
start_mode: manual
The options for the start mode are, auto, delayed, disabled a manual.
Once, you save the file, go ahead and run the playbook.