Ansible – IT Automation Platform

Ansible is a powerful open-source automation platform that simplifies IT infrastructure management, application deployment, and configuration management. Using simple YAML-based playbooks and an agentless architecture, Ansible enables infrastructure as code, making complex multi-tier deployments repeatable and consistent across environments.

Key Features

• Agentless – No software required on managed nodes
• YAML Playbooks – Human-readable automation scripts
• Idempotent – Safe to run multiple times
• Extensive Modules – Thousands of built-in modules
• Inventory Management – Dynamic and static inventory support
• Roles – Reusable automation components
• Ansible Galaxy – Community-shared roles and collections

Installation

# Using pip (recommended)
pip install ansible

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install ansible

# RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
sudo dnf install ansible

# Verify installation
ansible --version

Basic Playbook Example

# playbook.yml
---
- name: Configure web servers
  hosts: webservers
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Install nginx
      apt:
        name: nginx
        state: present

    - name: Start nginx service
      service:
        name: nginx
        state: started
        enabled: yes

# Run playbook
ansible-playbook -i inventory playbook.yml

Use Cases

Ansible is essential for configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, security compliance, and orchestrating complex workflows.

Download Ansible