How to Copy files from Windows remote hosts with Ansible?

I’m going to show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.

Ansible Copy files from Windows remote hosts

  • ansible.builtin.fetch
  • Copy files from remote nodes

Today we’re talking about the Ansible module fetch. The full name is ansible.builtin.fetch which means is part of the collection of modules “builtin” with ansible and shipped with it. This module is pretty stable and out for years. The purpose is to copy files from remote locations. Please note that the opposite is done by Ansible copy module for Linux and Ansible win_copy module for Windows.

Parameters

  • dest path - the local path
  • src string - Remote file path
  • fail_on_missing boolean - yes / no
  • validate_checksum boolean - yes / no
  • flat boolean - no / yes

The parameter list is pretty wide but I’ll summarize the most useful. The only required parameters are “dest” which specifies a directory to save the file into and the “src” specifies the source files in the remote hosts. It must be a file, not a directory. The “fail_on_missing” boolean is set to true so the task is going to fail if the file doesn’t exist. The file is going to be transferred and validated in the source and the destination with a checksum. If we don’t want this behavior we could override with the “validate_checksum” option. The “flat” option allows you to override the default behavior of appending hostname/path/to/file to the destination.

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Playbook

Copy files from Windows remote hosts with Ansible Playbook.

code

---
- name: fetch module Playbook
  hosts: all
  become: false
  vars:
    myfile: 'C:\Users\vagrant\Desktop\example.txt'
    dump_dir: "logs"
  tasks:
    - name: fetch file
      ansible.builtin.fetch:
        src: "{{ myfile }}"
        dest: "{{ dump_dir }}"

execution

ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/win/inventory copy\ files\ from\ remote\ hosts/fetch-windows.yml
PLAY [fetch module Playbook] **************************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************************
ok: [WindowsServer]
TASK [fetch file] *********************************************************************************
changed: [WindowsServer]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
WindowsServer              : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
ansible-pilot $

idempotency

ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/win/inventory copy\ files\ from\ remote\ hosts/fetch-windows.yml
PLAY [fetch module Playbook] **************************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************************
ok: [WindowsServer]
TASK [fetch file] *********************************************************************************
ok: [WindowsServer]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
WindowsServer              : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
ansible-pilot $

before execution

fetch before execution

after execution

ansible-pilot $ ls -al copy\ files\ from\ remote\ hosts/logs 
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 lberton  staff   96 Jan 31 12:34 .
drwxr-xr-x  5 lberton  staff  160 Jan 31 12:34 ..
drwxr-xr-x  3 lberton  staff   96 Jan 31 12:34 WindowsServer
ansible-pilot $ ls -al copy\ files\ from\ remote\ hosts/logs/WindowsServer 
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 lberton  staff  96 Jan 31 12:34 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 lberton  staff  96 Jan 31 12:34 ..
drwxr-xr-x  3 lberton  staff  96 Jan 31 12:34 C:
ansible-pilot $ ls -al copy\ files\ from\ remote\ hosts/logs/WindowsServer/C:/Users/vagrant/Desktop
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  3 lberton  staff  96 Jan 31 12:34 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 lberton  staff  96 Jan 31 12:34 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 lberton  staff  15 Jan 31 12:34 example.txt
ansible-pilot $ cat copy\ files\ from\ remote\ hosts/logs/WindowsServer/C:/Users/vagrant/Desktop/example.txt
example content%
ansible-pilot $

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Conclusion

Now you know how to Copy files from Windows remote hosts with Ansible. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, and Website, X (formerly Twitter) to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.

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