Created on 2021-01-15 06:05
Published on 2021-01-15 06:18
Ansible is one of the most straightforward automation services to implement. Sponsored by Redhat, Ansible managed to gain a foothold in the automation industry faster than the other infrastructures. This open-source IT automation platform is among the few that can be used to automate the entire IT department from network administration to managers and developers.
Ansible has more than a quarter-million downloads and is one of the most popular automation software on GitHub. Since it's an open-source project, deploying this won't be that difficult, thanks to the transparency. If you're worried about your organization's security, you can test the code and see if it's secure for you.
Ansible has many advantages and a few disadvantages compared to other automation tools available in the market. Let us first see the benefits.
The core principle of Ansible is to make automation as simple as possible. Before Ansible made its debut, automation of the IT department was only a developer's job. However, Ansible changed everything with its simple design, elegant UI, and a great learning curve. Anyone can get used to Ansible in a matter of hours. Unlike a few automation tools such as Puppet, you don't have to know any programming languages to start using Ansible.
Ansible comes with app deployment, configuration management, and workflow orchestration. These are the three tools you need to deliver software as quickly as possible with no errors.
You can control the entire lifecycle of an application in Ansible. This will reduce much manual work and will smoothen the workflow.
Ansible is an Agentless infrastructure. This means that there are no agents to exploit in Ansible. This improves the security of the application considerably. In addition to this, Ansible uses openSSH and WinRM.
Ansible has a defined workflow. All the tasks in Ansible happen in order. This order won't be broken throughout the lifecycle. Even though this may seem like a disadvantage since tasks happen synchronously, the defined workflow makes Ansible easier to learn and understand. This feature makes it the best choice for small businesses and startups.
Ansible is quite efficient. It comes with everything you need to manage and maintain the automation needs of an entire department. You don't have to install any additional software to start using Ansible. This saves some much-needed storage space on the server, reducing the overall deployment cost.
Ansible is a DevOps automation tool and is a winner when it comes to security. Even though there aren't as many features as paid security automation software programs, Ansible still controls site-wide security. You can automate security features such as firewall rules and remote node security updates with Ansible. This means that if you set the security rules in the playbook, all the remote systems connected will also be updated to the same settings.
Even though numerous organizations and startups are using Ansible, it is still a newbie in IT automation (initial release date 20 Feb 2012). Ansible is pretty young compared to its competitors, such as The Chef or Puppet.
Ansible does not have any notion of state. This puts it at a disadvantage compared to tools like Puppet. Ansible doesn't track dependencies. Once a task is complete, Ansible will move to the next task. It doesn't matter if the job fails or succeeds. This behavior will prevent the tasks from reaching the desired state in complex automation solutions.
Ansible has a simple interface. This sometimes makes it harder to execute complex tasks. For instance, only about 85-90% of the command line tasks will work in the user interface. Even though the number may seem negligible, if you plan to make full use of the software, you have to use the command-line interface for that.
Some users also reported that the user interface sometimes does not sync properly with the command line. This may cause some errors and redundant queries.
Even though you can use Ansible on a Windows machine, it still needs a Linux control machine to manage the Windows host. This is because Ansible uses a Powershell on Windows machines to connect to a Linux host. The limited support for Windows makes it challenging to use Ansible for purely operational needs.
In Linkedin learning, you have some excellent courses to get to know Ansible :
I also like this example page :
And the best place to look for examples is Ansible Galaxy, where you can upload your playbooks to share them with others or download some that others have made.
Ansible is verily a fantastic automation tool. If you are looking for a free, trustworthy, simple automation tool, Ansible is the horse to bet on.