Ensuring that NTP is installed, configured, and running

To make sure NTP is present, we use the yum module:

- name: Ensure NTP is installed 
  yum: 
    name: ntp 
    state: present 
  become: True

Now that we know that NTP is installed, we should ensure that the server is using the timezone that we want. To do so, we will create a symbolic link in /etc/localtime that will point to the wanted zoneinfo file:

- name: Ensure the timezone is set to UTC 
  file: 
    src: /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT 
    dest: /etc/localtime 
    state: link 
  become: True 

As you can see, we have used the file module, specifying that it needs to be a link (state: link).

To complete the NTP configuration, we need to start the ntpd service and ensure that it will run at every consequent boot:

- name: Ensure the NTP service is running and enabled 
  service: 
    name: ntpd 
    state: started 
    enabled: True 
  become: True