Automate Server Health Checks in seconds

Ansible · 12 min · Practical

A purely diagnostic playbook that instantly pulls vitals—CPU, RAM, Disk space, and Load averages—across your entire fleet and prints them directly to your console, without having to SSH into a single box.

Why this playbook holds up

When an alert fires or a user reports slowness, you need answers immediately. Instead of opening 10 terminal tabs, this playbook acts as a distributed stethoscope, registering raw bash outputs and cleanly presenting them in the Ansible debug log.

Strictly Safe Execution

Every single task is a read-only command. It makes zero state changes to the remote hosts, making it 100% safe to run blindly during an active incident.

Familiar Outputs

By leveraging standard Linux commands like free -h and df -h, the debug outputs match exactly what a sysadmin is already used to reading.

The full task list

check_resources.yml

---
- name: Check server resource usage
  hosts: all
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Check hostname
      command: hostname
      register: hostname

    - name: Display hostname
      debug:
        var: hostname.stdout

    - name: Check RAM usage
      command: free -h
      register: memory

    - name: Display RAM usage
      debug:
        var: memory.stdout_lines

    - name: Check CPU usage
      command: top -bn1
      register: cpu

    - name: Display CPU usage
      debug:
        var: cpu.stdout_lines

    - name: Check disk usage
      command: df -h
      register: disk

    - name: Display disk usage
      debug:
        var: disk.stdout_lines

    - name: Check system uptime
      command: uptime
      register: uptime

    - name: Display uptime
      debug:
        var: uptime.stdout

    - name: Check load average
      shell: cat /proc/loadavg
      register: load

    - name: Display load average
      debug:
        var: load.stdout

    - name: Check logged-in users
      command: who
      register: users

    - name: Display logged-in users
      debug:
        var: users.stdout_lines

    - name: Check disk inode usage
      command: df -i
      register: inode

    - name: Display inode usage
      debug:
        var: inode.stdout_lines

    - name: Check mounted file systems
      command: mount
      register: mounts

    - name: Display mounted file systems
      debug:
        var: mounts.stdout_lines

Data Gathered

identity Identifies the host and checks for any actively logged-in users.

hostname, who
compute Checks memory constraints, active processes, and overall CPU load over time.

free -h, top, loadavg, uptime
storage Verifies disk space, active mount points, and file system inode availability.

df -h, df -i, mount

What the output looks like

When executed, Ansible uses the debug module to print the stored stdout from your shell commands. stdout_lines is specifically used for multi-line outputs like `df -h` to format it cleanly as a list.

terminal snippet

TASK [Display RAM usage] ********************************
ok: [db-server-01] => {
    "memory.stdout_lines": [
        "              total       used       free     shared  buff/cache   available",
        "Mem:           15Gi      2.1Gi      9.3Gi      120Mi       3.6Gi        12Gi",
        "Swap:         4.0Gi         0B      4.0Gi"
    ]
}

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