#Introduction to Ansible
- Ansible is an open-source configuration Management, deployment and provisioning Automation tool maintained by Redhat.
- It is very, very simple to setup and yet powerful.
- Ansible will be helpful to perform:
- Configuration Management
- Application Deployment
- Task Automation
- IT Orchestration
How Ansible works
- Ansible works by connecting to remote nodes (hosts) and pushing out small programs, called “Ansible modules” to them.
- The pushed programs/modules will be executed on remote server by Ansible over SSH and removes them when finished.
- Unlike Puppet or Chef it doesn’t use an agent on the remote host, Instead Ansible uses SSH. It is agentless.
- It’s written in Python which needs to be installed on the remote host.
- This means that you don’t have to setup a client server environment before using Ansible
Benefits of using Ansible
- It is a free open -source Automation tool and simple to use.
- Uses existing OpenSSH for connection
- Agent-less – No need to install any agent on Ansible Clients/Nodes
- Python/YAML based
- Highly flexible and versatile in configuration management of systems.
- Large number of ready to use modules for system management
- Custom modules can be added if needed