Ansible is an open-source automation tool that simplifies the management and configuration of computer systems. It is designed to streamline tasks such as software deployment, configuration management, and orchestration, making it a popular choice for DevOps professionals and system administrators.
Key features of Ansible include:
- Agentless Architecture - Ansible operates in an agentless manner, which means that ansible need not be installed on the managed nodes. Instead, it uses SSH for communication and python (should be installed in the nodes), making it lightweight and easy to deploy.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) - Ansible allows defining infrastructure as code using YAML-based playbooks. This approach ensures consistency, repeatability, and version control of your infrastructure configurations.
- Declarative Language - Ansible uses a declarative language, allowing to define the desired state rather than writing procedural scripts/code. This makes it easier to understand and maintain Ansible code.
- Modularity and Reusability - Ansible promotes modularity and reusability through roles, which are self-contained units of tasks, variables, and handlers. Roles enable organizing automation code effectively and share it across projects.
- Extensibility - Ansible’s extensible architecture allows extending its functionality by creating custom modules or leveraging community-contributed modules. This flexibility enables to automate a wide range of tasks across different systems and applications.
- Orchestration - Ansible can orchestrate complex workflows and tasks across multiple hosts, making it suitable for managing large-scale infrastructure deployments and configurations.