Ansible

What is Ansible? Ansible is an open source IT automation engine that automates provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, orchestration, and various other IT processes. It is easily accessible and leverages the collective experience of its thousands of contributors. Red Hat® Ansible Automation Platform combines several upstream projects into a robust, security-focused business platform for mission-critical automation. It lays the groundwork of the open-source project and offers an end-to-end automation experience for multi-disciplinary teams. What are the characteristics of Ansible? Ansible is characterized by its agentless and model-driven design, allowing for simplicity and ease of use through playbooks. It is provisioned over SSH or WinRM, making it easy to start automating operations without installing additional software on remote machines. The core of Ansible is its lean, modular design. It offers a wide range of modules for executing commands, handling files, and managing applications, making it highly flexible and capable of addressing diverse automation needs. Furthermore, Ansible’s focus on idempotence ensures consistency in execution, enabling seamless and reliable operations. What are the application scenarios of Ansible? Ansible can be applied in numerous scenarios to enhance operational efficiency and consistency. It is ideal for provisioning and managing virtual machines, deploying and managing applications, configuring network devices, and more. For organizations aiming for compliance and policy enforcement, Ansible’s Policy as Code capabilities can be utilized to automate compliance and policy governance across the operational lifecycle. Additionally, Ansible is widely used for infrastructure as code (IaC) practices, allowing users to define, deploy, and manage infrastructure configurations in a reproducible and repeatable manner.