What is Ansible?

Since the utilization of computing resources was increasing exponentially doing multiple tasks parallelly has become difficult for humans.  And the companies today were not in enough position to hire the human according to the need. Hence the companies started thinking about the solution to this problem. Then they thought that automation is the best option to get rid of these kinds of problems.  This automation suits best various areas of the IT industry. One such area is server Management.  Today Server management has become a tedious task for system administrators. Hence these people opt for the server management tool like Ansible.

Today most of the SysOps people opt for this tool for server management. Do you know, what are the exciting features of this tool? If NO, read the article to get answers to these questions.

Without wasting much time, let  us jump into the actual topic

What is Ansible?

It is a  simple software tool in providing powerful automation for cross-platform customer support. This tool is primarily used for application development, updating the workstations and servers, cloud provisioning, configuration management, intra-service workstation, and so on. In simple words, this system is capable of doing all the activities on a weekly (or) a monthly basis. Moreover, this automation tool does not depend on agent software and does not have security issues. Hence the user can easily deploy the application on this platform. Besides the automation, this platform requires instruction to accomplish each job. Since everything is written in a script format, it is easy to do version control.  Here the principal result of this is the major contribution to “Infrastructure as a Code”. Here the idea of the maintenance of server and client infrastructure should be treated as the same as software development.

Since the ansible can be used for front end automation, system administration, and DevOps Engineers, this platform is useful for all users.  Besides this platform not only allows you to configure one computer but allows you to configure a network of computers at once. Moreover, this platform does not require a prior programming language. All the instructions written here were in a simple human-readable format. And also, this platform is capable of reading all types of files. Automation Simplifies the most complex task. It not only makes the developer's job manageable but also allows them to focus attention on the other tasks. Besides, it frees up time and increases efficiency.  According to the recent stats, this tool stood at the top of the automation tools.

Get more information on Ansible taught by industry experts at Ansible Online Training

How Ansible Works?

Ansible is designed for Single tier applications since day one. It is responsible for modeling the IT infrastructure rather than managing one system at a time. It does not use any agents and custom security infrastructure.  Hence it is easier to deploy and manage. Besides, it uses a simple language called YAML to describe the automation of jobs.

This tool consists of two categories of computers called the control node as well as the managed node. Here the control node is a computer that runs ansible. And there should be at least one control node even the backup control node exist. The managed node is managed by the control node. Here the ansible works by connecting the nodes on the network and then sending a small program called ansible module to that node. It executes these modules over ssh and removes them when finished. Here, the main criteria is Ansible control node has login access to the managed nodes. Here the SSH Keys are the most common way to provide access, but other forms of authentications were also supported.

What does Ansible do?

The term Ansible sounds to be complex, but most of the complexity is handled by the ansible but not the end-user. An ansible module is written to be the desired model of the system. i.e each module defines the true state of the system. Here maintaining the infrastructure is about checking the versions of the software. Hence when people talk about using the ansible, they were internally referring to the utilization of Ansible modules. because those parts of ansible perform specific tasks. And these Ansible modules were responsible for automating something across several computers. And it allows the programmers to write custom modules to perform the specialized task.

What are the advantages of Ansible?

Ansible tools have the following advantages:

Simple: It uses a simple syntax written in YAML  call playbooks.YAML is a human-readable data serialization language. Even non-programmers can use this to understand what is happening.

Independent: The user does not need to install the specific software on the client/ host system which the user needs to automate. Moreover, it does not require to set up a management infrastructure that includes managing your system, network as well as storage.

Powerful and Flexible:  It has powerful features that enable you to model the most complex workflows. The ansible batteries can manage the infrastructure, network, operating system as well as services.

Efficient: Since the Ansible module works via JSON it is extensible with the modules written in programming that you were aware of. It introduces the modules as the basic building blocks for your software.

Likewise, there are many uses of Ansible when you work practically with this tool. By reaching the end of this blog, I hope you people have acquired enough knowledge regarding ansible and its application real-time project.  You people can get hands-on experience on Ansible from beginner to the advanced level at Ansible Online Course