What is Ansible

Ansible is an open-source automation tool that simplifies the management of IT infrastructure. It is designed to automate tasks such as configuration management, application deployment, orchestration, and provisioning.

Ansible is also agentless, meaning it operates without the need for an agent on the managed server. It uses SSH to communicate with remote systems, making it easy to set up and manage.

Core Concepts

To fully understand how Ansible works and its capabilities, it is essential to explore its core concepts, which form the foundation of its automation framework.

YAML as the Configuration Language

Ansible utilizes YAML as its primary language for configuration files. Users can define variables and templates, making it simple to update configurations across multiple playbooks without redundancy.

Playbooks

Ansible uses playbooks to define automation tasks in a structured manner. Playbooks allow users to specify a series of tasks to be executed on targeted hosts.

Inventory Management

Ansible uses an inventory file to list the hosts and groups of hosts that will be managed. By organizing hosts into groups, users can easily apply configurations and tasks to multiple systems at once.

Use Cases

Ansible is widely used for various automation tasks, including:

• Configuration Management : Ensuring that systems are configured consistently and correctly.
• Application Deployment : Automating the deployment of applications across multiple environments.
• Orchestration : Coordinating complex workflows that involve multiple systems and services.

Installing Ansible

Before using Ansible, it needs to be installed on the machine where you will run the automation tasks.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ansible

Uninstalling Ansible

If you no longer need Ansible or want to reinstall it cleanly, here is how uninstall it depending on how it was installed.

sudo apt remove --purge ansible
sudo apt autoremove