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Ansible is an open-source configuration management and provisioning tool, similar to Chef, Puppet or Salt.
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It uses SSH to connect to servers and run the configured tasks. Ansible lets you control and configure nodes from a single machine.
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What makes it different from other management software is that Ansible uses SSH infrastructure.
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In February 2012 the Ansible project began. It was first developed by Michael DeHaan, the creator of Cobbler and Func, Fedora Unified Network Controller.
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Initially called AnsibleWorks Inc, the company funding the ansible tool was acquired in 2015 by RedHat and later on, along with RedHat, moved under the umbrella of IBM.
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In the present, Ansible comes included in distributions like Fedora Linux, RHEL, Centos and Oracle Linux.
- Configuration Management
- App Deployment
- Provisioning
- Continuous Delivery
- Orchestration
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most significant advantages of Ansible is that it is free to use by everyone.
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No Agent
: As long as the box can be ssh’d into and it has python, it can be configured with Ansible. -
Idempotent
: Ansible’s whole architecture is structured around the concept of idempotency. The core idea here is that you only do things if they are needed and that things are repeatable without side effects. -
Declarative Not Procedural
: Other configuration tools tend to be procedural do this and then do that and so on. Ansible works by you writing a description of the state of the machine that you want and then it takes steps to fulfill that description. -
Tiny Learning Curve
: an advantage that encourages the adoption of Ansible is its smooth learning curve determined by the comprehensive documentation and easy to learn structure and configuration. -
It does not need any special system administrator skills to install and use Ansible, and the official documentation is very comprehensive.
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its modularity
: regarding plugins, modules, inventories, and playbooks make Ansible the perfect companion to orchestrate large environments. -
Ansible is very lightweight and consistent, and no constraints regarding the operating system or underlying hardware are present.
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It is also very secure due to its agentless capabilities and due to the use of OpenSSH security features.