In this use case, we will use an Ansible playbook to automatically set up and configure some system services on multiple hosts. The following lines of code show how to make sure a service is installed and then how to carry out a configuration check to make sure it is well-configured. Finally, we start the service and enable it to start upon system startup:

---
- name: Setup and configured recommended Linux services
  hosts: Linux
  become: yes
  gather_facts: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Install a list of services on Linux hosts
      package: 
         name: '{{ item }}'
         state: latest
      with_items:
         - ntp
         - tzdate
         - autofs

    - name: Fix time zone on Red Hat 6
      lineinfile: 
         path: /etc/sysconfig/clock
         line: "ZONE='Europe/London'"
         state: present
         create: yes
      when: ansible_os_family == 'RedHat' and 
      ansible_distribution_version.split('.')[0] == '6'

    - name: Setup time zone on all local hosts
      timezone: 
         name: "Europe/London"

    - name: Fix time zone on Red Hat 6
      blockinfile:
         path: /etc/ntp.conf
         block: |
            server time.nist.gov iburst
            server 0.uk.pool.ntp.org iburst
            server 1.uk.pool.ntp.org iburst
         insertafter: "# Specify one or more NTP 
         servers."
         state: present
      when: ansible_os_family == 'RedHat'

 - name: Restart NTP service to apply change and enable    
   it on Debian
  systemd:
  name: ntp
  enabled: True
  state: restarted
  when: ansible_os_family == 'Debian'

 - name: Restart NTP service to apply change and enable 
  it on Red Hat
  systemd:
  name: ntpd
  enabled: True
  state: restarted
  when: ansible_os_family == 'RedHat'

 - name: Add NFS and SMB support to automount
  blockinfile: 
  path: /etc/auto.master
  block: |
  /nfs /etc/auto.nfs
  /cifs /etc/auto.cifs 
  state: present

 - name: create the NFS and SMB AutoFS configuration    
   files
  file: 
  name: '{{ item }}'
  state: touch
  with_items:
  - '/etc/auto.nfs'
  - '/etc/auto.cifs'

 - name: Restart AutoFS service to apply a change and 
   enable it
  systemd:
  name: autofs
  enabled: True
  state: restarted 

This playbook can be called by another playbook as part of a provisioning task to configure the hosts after they are built. It is also possible to add extra functionalities to enable aspects of a bigger Ansible role.