diff --git a/.ci/ansible_install.py b/.ci/ansible_install.py
index 7678eb45..b4996e76 100755
--- a/.ci/ansible_install.py
+++ b/.ci/ansible_install.py
@@ -13,7 +13,8 @@ batches = [
             '-r tests/ansible/requirements.txt',
         # 'pip install -q ansible=={0}'.format(ci_lib.ANSIBLE_VERSION)
         # ansible v2.10 isn't out yet so we're installing from github for now
-        'pip install -q {}'.format(ci_lib.ANSIBLE_VERSION)
+        # encoding is required for installing ansible 2.10 with pip2, otherwise we get a UnicodeDecode error
+        'LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 pip install -q {}'.format(ci_lib.ANSIBLE_VERSION)
     ]
 ]
 
@@ -25,4 +26,4 @@ batches.extend(
 ci_lib.run_batches(batches)
 
 # after ansible is installed, install common collections until ansible==2.10 comes out
-ci_lib.run('ansible-galaxy collection install community.general')
\ No newline at end of file
+ci_lib.run('ansible-galaxy collection install community.general')
diff --git a/.ci/azure-pipelines.yml b/.ci/azure-pipelines.yml
index 7a1fa1fc..fff7d4f1 100644
--- a/.ci/azure-pipelines.yml
+++ b/.ci/azure-pipelines.yml
@@ -102,7 +102,7 @@ jobs:
         #STRATEGY: linear
 
       Ansible_210_27:
-        python.version: '2.7.18'
+        python.version: '2.7'
         MODE: ansible
         VER: git+https://github.com/ansible/ansible.git@v2.10.0