Ansible for DevOps Engineers

Ansible Introduction

Ansible is a powerful open-source IT automation tool that simplifies and streamlines various IT tasks. It is primarily used for:  

Infrastructure as Code (IaC):

  • Provisioning: Creating and configuring new infrastructure resources like servers, networks, and storage.  

  • Configuration Management: Ensuring that systems are consistently configured to desired states.  

  • Application Deployment: Deploying and managing applications across different environments.  

Key features and benefits of Ansible:

  • Agentless architecture: No need to install agents on target systems, making it easier to deploy and manage.  

  • Human-readable language: Uses YAML syntax, making it easy to understand and write playbooks.  

  • Modularity: Provides a rich library of modules for various tasks, making it flexible and adaptable.  

  • Idempotency: Ensures that changes are applied only once, even if a playbook is run multiple times.  

  • Community support: Has a large and active community, providing extensive resources and support.  

Common use cases for Ansible:

  • Data center automation: Provisioning and managing servers, networks, and storage.  

  • Cloud automation: Deploying and managing resources on cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP.  

  • Application deployment: Deploying and managing applications across different environments.  

  • Configuration management: Ensuring that systems are consistently configured to desired states.  

  • Orchestration: Coordinating complex workflows across multiple systems.  

Overall, Ansible is a valuable tool for automating IT tasks, improving efficiency, and reducing errors.

Install Ansible on EC2 instance -

You can easily install Ansible in a CentOS Linux machine using the following command:

yum install ansible -y