Ansible Tags Explained – Examples & Best Practices

Ansible tags provide users with granular control over the execution of specific tasks, roles, and even entire plays within a playbook. They are specified in the Playbook YAML file and assigned to a task or role. When using the --tags parameter in the ansible-playbook command, Ansible will execute the tagged tasks only and ignore the rest. This feature is particularly useful when you want to avoid running the entire playbook and focus instead on specific components to prevent potential disruptions in your environment. Tags can be used for debugging, skipping certain tasks, reusing components across different scenarios, listing all tags in an Ansible playbook, adding multiple tags throughout each task, role, and play, and using special tags like 'always' and 'never'.