You have hundreds and thousands of online documentation and wiki pages for learning Ansible, and this is our attempt to cover Ansible in a simple and beginner level approach.
See all parts ofย Automation with Ansible Guides here
What is Ansible
Ansible is a simple and awesome IT automation engine by which you can automates yourย IT environment for provisioning, configuration management, application and patch deployment, orchestration etc.
Ansible is,
- Simple โ commands and playbooks are human readable and easy to exchange between teams; they donโt need special skills to read it.
- Powerful โ you can manage application/patch/server deployment, configuration, workflow automation or appliances (ESX hosts, Storage boxes or network devices).
- Agentless โ Ansible does not need any agent to be running on the managed hosts , instead it connect to the hosts using OpenSSH or WinRM.
How Ansible Works
Ansible Concept and Architecture
Controlnode โ Ansible is installed and run from the controlnode and will contain copies of your project file including ansible playbooks. It can be a workstation or a dedicated server in the environment.
Managed Hosts โ these are listed servers or nodes in the inventory โ defined as static or via dynamic inventory scripts โ on which Ansible commands or playbook tasks need to be executed.
Playbook โ Plays are ordered set of tasks to execute against host selections from your inventory. A playbook is a file containing one or more plays.
Tasks โ Task run a module with arguments to accomplish the required state or action.
Tasks โ Plays โ Playbook
Ansible Tower โ is an enterprise framework by Redhat, to manage, control and secure your ansible environment.
Use Cases
- Provisioning
- Configuration Management
- App Deployment
- Continuous Delivery
- Security & Compliance
- Orchestration
Letโs learn about Ansible Installation in next part.
See all parts ofย Automation with Ansible Guides here