How is the protection of secret data in Ansible implemented using Vault?

Ansible Vault allows you to encrypt sensitive data such as passwords, keys, and other confidential parameters to store them securely alongside other Ansible playbooks and inventories. Symmetric encryption with a password or key is used for protection.

Key points of working with Vault:

• Creating encrypted files using the command ansible-vault create <filename>.
• Editing encrypted files with ansible-vault edit <filename>.
• Using encrypted data in playbooks, where Ansible automatically decrypts them during execution.
• Passing the password via a file, environment variable, or interactively.

Example of creating an encrypted file:

ansible-vault create secrets.yml

Inside secrets.yml, you can store, for example:

password: mysecretpassword

When running a playbook, specify the Vault password:

ansible-playbook site.yml --ask-vault-pass

Thus, Vault provides secure storage and use of secrets without revealing them in plain text in the repository.