Overview of Ansible

Ansible: Simple IT Automation

INTRODUCTION
Ansible is an automation tool. There are different types of automation tools like Chef, Puppet, SaltStack. They all perform a similar kind of job like the Implementation of infrastructure, Deployment of applications.

Ansible is a bit different from the other legacy tools like Puppet and Chef because Ansible runs on SSH. That means it doesn't require any agent that needs to be installed on Client Operating systems. This helps to reduce the load and also provides you the great flexibility to manage your infrastructure.

Ansible
Ansible is an open-source tool (we do not have to get the tool from any vendor or licenses). Ansible is an automation engine that automates software provisioning, configuration management, and Application deployment. Ansible can also manage any NIX platform through SSH.

Features of Ansible

• Cross-platform support — Ansible can support any NIX, Windows machines, and network devices. It also supports Docker, Openstack.
• Agentless architecture, no agents is to be installed on server and clients. There is a lesser workload when implementing processes with Ansible. It can be easily be connected with the Client platform using the IP address or any SSH protocol which easily performs the deployment on the target machines.
• OpenSSH, can also be run on Windows OS, Linux OS, MAC OS.
• Open-source and actively maintained on GitHub.
• Unchallenging & easy Installation and configuration.
• Highly scalable.
• Secure as it uses SSH for communication.
• Easy to understand and remember the command Syntax.

Ansible is not just an automation engine, but it is also used for :

• Configuration Management.
• Application Deployment.
• Orchestrations.
• Provisioning (AWS, Virtual, Openstack, AZURE, etc)

Key Components

• Ansible Modules: Modules allow you to get the functionality of what is expected for example, you are expecting the OpenStack deployment you need to get the OpenStack module in Ansible.
• Inventory: Contains the list of the target devices. You can create a list of different groups and run commands on them.
• Tasks: The tasks are what you are expecting from Ansible, you can create and reuse it. You don’t have to create a task every time.

Create once and reuse everytime

• Variables: You can declare the variable to be called in your playbook. It is the symbolic name for (or reference to) information.
• Playbooks: You can congregate ordered processes, and manage configuration needed to build out a remote system using playbooks. Playbooks can declare configurations and orchestrate steps, you can also write infrastructure as code (iac) and manage it all in your source control.

Ansible roles can be configured for the more systematic management of the Ansibleplaybooks.

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