In today’s rapidly evolving IT landscape, automation has become a cornerstone for streamlining operations, increasing efficiency, and ensuring consistency across environments. Ansible, an open-source automation tool, has gained immense popularity for its simplicity, scalability, and flexibility. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore Ansible from the ground up, covering everything from its architecture to advanced concepts like Ansible Tower and ad hoc commands.
This Blog covers all the aspects of Ansible, a tool used in DevOps for the Management, Deployment, and Orchestration of IT Infrastructure including the following:
This blog talks about technologies that are part of the Azure DevOps environment. If it’s something in which you have an interest or you want to learn it then you can visit our previous blog to learn more about the [AZ-400] Microsoft Azure DevOps certification.
What Is Ansible?
- Ansible is an open-source IT Configuration Management, Deployment & Orchestration tool.
- It aims to provide large productivity gains to a wide variety of automation challenges.
- This tool is very simple to use yet powerful enough to automate complex multi-tier IT application environments.
- Simple, powerful, and agentless IT automation that anyone can use.
- It uses SSH to connect to servers and run the configured Tasks.
- Ansible lets you control and configure nodes from a single machine.
- The project was funded in 2013 and bought by Red Hat in 2015.
Why Use Ansible?
- No Agent: As long as the box can be ssh’d and it has Python, it can be configured with Ansible.
- Idempotent: Ansible’s whole architecture is structured around the concept of idempotency. The core idea here is that you only do things if they are needed and that things are repeatable without side effects.
- Declarative Not Procedural: Other configuration tools tend to be procedural do this and then do that and so on. Ansible works by you writing a description of the state of the machine that you want and then it takes steps to fulfill that description.
- Tiny Learning Curve: Ansible is quite easy to learn. It doesn’t require any extra knowledge.
Ansible Use Cases
- Provisioning
- Configuration Management
- App Deployment
- Continuous Delivery
- Security & Compliance
- Orchestration
Ansible Architecture Diagram
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Ansible Playbook
- Plain-text YAML files that describe the desired state of something
- Human and Machine-readable
- Can be used to build the entire application environment
What Are Inventories In Ansible?
- Static lines of servers
- Dynamic list of servers: AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.
- Ranges
- Other custom things
Check Out: What is Azure DevOps?
Ansible Modules
- Over 1000 modules provided by Ansible to automate
- Modules are like plugins that do the actual work in Ansible, they are what gets executed in each playbook task.
- Each module is mostly standalone and can be written in a standard scripting language (such as Python, Perl, Ruby, Bash, etc.)
Also Check: Azure Pipeline vs Jenkins, and know their major differences!
Ansible Tower
Ansible Tower is a GUI and REST interface for Ansible that supercharges it by adding RBAC, centralized logging, auto-scaling/provisioning call-backs, graphical inventory editing, and more.
Capabilities:
This command-line tool sends commands to the Tower API. It is capable of retrieving, creating, modifying, and deleting most resources within the Tower.
- A few potential uses include:
- Launching playbook runs (for instance, from Jenkins, TeamCity, Bamboo, etc.)
- Checking on job statuses
- Rapidly creating objects like organizations, users, teams, and more.
Ansible Roles
- Roles are a way to group tasks into one container. We could have a role for setting up MySQL, and another one for configuring IP tables.
- Roles make it easy to configure hosts. Any role can be performed on any host or group of hosts such as:
- – hosts: all
- – roles:
- – role_1
- – role_2
Ansible Variables
There are many different ways to source variables:
- Playbooks
- Files
- Inventories (group vars, host vars)
- Command-line Discovered Variables
- Ansible Tower
How To Run The Ansible Commands?
Ad-Hoc: Ansible <inventory> -m
Playbooks: Ansible-playbook
AD-HOC Commands Examples
What are ad hoc commands?
Ad hoc commands are one-off commands executed directly from the command line without the need for writing playbooks, allowing users to perform quick tasks or gather information.
Syntax of ad hoc commands
Ad hoc commands follow the syntax ansible <pattern> -m <module> -a <arguments>
, where <pattern>
specifies the target hosts and <module>
specifies the task to be performed.
Practical examples
Transferring file to many servers/machines
$ Ansible Abc -m copy -a “src = /etc/yum.conf dest = /tmp/yum.conf“
Creating a new directory
$ Ansible ABC -m file -a “dest = /path/user1/new mode = 777 owner = user1 group = user1 state = directory“
Deleting whole directory and files
$ Ansible ABC -m file -a “dest = /path/user1/new state = absent”
Conclusion
In conclusion, Ansible is a versatile automation tool that empowers IT teams to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and accelerate innovation. By leveraging Ansible’s architecture, modules, playbooks, and best practices, organizations can automate repetitive tasks, deploy applications with confidence, and scale their infrastructure effortlessly.
FAQs
Is Ansible difficult to learn for beginners?
Ansible's simple syntax and agentless architecture make it relatively easy to learn for beginners, especially those familiar with YAML and basic system administration concepts.
Can Ansible manage Windows servers?
Yes, Ansible supports managing Windows servers using its built-in modules and PowerShell scripts, allowing users to automate tasks across heterogeneous environments.
What are some alternatives to Ansible?
Some alternatives to Ansible include Puppet, Chef, SaltStack, and Terraform, each with its own strengths and use cases in the automation landscape.
Is Ansible Tower free to use?
Ansible Tower offers both open-source and commercial versions, with the open-source version (AWX) available for free and the commercial version offering additional features and support.
How can I contribute to the Ansible community?
You can contribute to the Ansible community by participating in forums, contributing code or documentation on GitHub, attending meetups or conferences, and sharing your knowledge and experiences with others.
Related/References
- Ansible for Beginners | Overview | Architecture & Use Cases
- [AZ-400] Azure DevOps Certification Path
- [AZ-400] Roles And Responsibilities As An Azure DevOps Engineer
- [AZ-400] Microsoft Azure DevOps Certification Exam: Everything You Need To Know
- [AZ-400] Microsoft Azure DevOps Training: Step By Step Activity Guides/Hands-On Lab Exercise
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