How to Generate a Single HTML Report for Windows Updates with Ansible

Learn how to adjust your Ansible playbook to create one unified HTML report for Windows updates across multiple servers, instead of generating individual reports.
---
This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/78225143/ asked by the user 'OrionUK' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/20028305/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/78228594/ provided by the user 'Alexander Pletnev' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/16417367/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

Visit these links for original content and any more details, such as alternate solutions, comments, revision history etc. For example, the original title of the Question was: Running Ansible playbook to list windows updates for multiple servers outputs multiple reports

Also, Content (except music) licensed under CC BY-SA https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/licensing
The original Question post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ) license, and the original Answer post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ) license.

If anything seems off to you, please feel free to write me at vlogize [AT] gmail [DOT] com.
---
Introduction

Ansible is a powerful automation tool widely used to manage system configurations and deployments. However, when running playbooks that target multiple servers, you might encounter an issue where separate reports are created for each host. This can lead to confusion and inefficiencies, especially if you're looking for a consolidated summary of needed updates.

In this guide, we will explore how to modify your Ansible playbook to generate a single HTML report for Windows updates across multiple servers instead of generating multiple reports. This consolidated approach facilitates easier review and management of updates.

Understanding the Problem

When executing your playbook to check for Windows updates across several hosts, the default behavior leads to the generation of multiple HTML files, each named uniquely with the current date and time. For instance, if you run the playbook on 10 different servers, you end up with 10 separate HTML files, each detailing the updates necessary for those respective servers.

Here's a simplified example of how the playbook may look:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]
name: Search for Windows Updates
ansible.windows.win_updates:
category_names: '*'
server_selection: "windows_update"
state: searched
register: check_win_updates_patch_result

name: Create HTML report
ansible.windows.win_template:
src: report.j2
dest: \server\reports\Windows_Patch_Report.html

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Adjust Your Playbook: The playbook needs to be modified to run the report generation step on localhost.

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]
name: Collect the data on Windows Updates
hosts: windows
roles:

your_role_name

name: Generate the report
hosts: localhost
tasks:

name: Create HTML report
ansible.windows.win_template:
src: report.html.j2
dest: \server\reports\Windows_Patch_Report.html

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

No Changes to Playbook Required: Keep your original playbook as it is, as it already creates reports per individual host.

Conclusion

By adjusting your Ansible playbook and utilizing Jinja2 templating correctly, you can effectively consolidate your reports into a single HTML file, or create individually formatted reports while minimizing redundancy. This approach allows for efficient monitoring and management of Windows updates across multiple servers.

Feel free to implement these strategies in your environment to enhance your Ansible playbook's reporting capabilities!

Видео How to Generate a Single HTML Report for Windows Updates with Ansible канала vlogize