Introduction to Ansible
In this tutorial, you will get to know the introduction to the Ansible and much more about it. In this series of articles that are going to be published, will consist the information about the Linux Automation with Ansible.
Traditional Method
Over the years, the system administrators, perform the different tasks manually to deploy the services. They used to refer to different documentation and refer them to perform the operations. Although it is an error-prone activity, as a human might commit some error or might skip any step.
In comparison to the multiple servers to be maintained, it is very difficult for the system administrator to control and maintain all the servers.
Here comes the role of automation, to overcome the problems faced with the manual method.
Ansible
Ansible is an automation tool, that is used by the IT Administrations to automate their services. It is an opensource automation tool. It is simple in terms of code which is human readable, powerful for configuration management and agentless. It is very much useful for the DevOps world and it acts as a language of DevOps.
Features of Ansible
Ansible provides the support for Windows, Linux and UNIX operating systems located in physical, virtual, cloud and container environments.
It supports control of multiple machines and can provide the support to manage the multiple inventories regardless of location.
It can be integrated with the other automation tools in the world of DevOps like Puppet, Jenkins that exist around.
Automation
Before the introducing of Ansible, the automation is done with the help of scripting languages such as Python script, Shell script, etc. These are program files, that can be run to execute the code and automate things. These are known as imperative languages (describe what to do? and how to do?). That means to write an automation code for windows, the developer must be aware of the commands to develop the code using scripting languages.
But, Ansible is intelligent. It means it uses the declarative language (what to do?). One who, need to develop the automation code in Ansible need not know the commands except that is to be achieved by automation.
Ansible Architecture
In the Ansible tool, the architecture design is in such a way that it controls two nodes namely, control node and managed node. The control node is the admin computer where the Ansible is installed and it can be run from here. All the managed nodes are defined in a file known as Inventory, which is stored inside the control node.
Configuration Mangement
Configuration management is to install the specific software that is necessary for the task and run the service to fulfil the requirement.
In this complete series of Ansible tutorials, the complete use cases and the working of Ansible tool, with the practical implementation is explained. The entire practical with this tool is performed on the Redhat Linux. You can easily install the virtual box software in your pc and run the Redhat Linux on top of it.
In the further upcoming session, the installation of Ansible is discussed. This series of tutorials will be useful for those who are interested in DevOps Automation and System Administration. For any sort of doubts or queries in this tutorial, you can reach us through the comment box.
Check out the other articles in the sections