Ansible – Powerful and Agile Automation

When talking about automation, some think: “It sounds complicated,” and they stay where they are, performing the same tasks every day, pressing the same buttons. This consumes a large portion of unrecoverable time. But is it really “complicated” to automate a task, or even to provision an environment in a fast and automated way?

When we talk about Ansible, it becomes simple. This powerful tool, when used correctly, can perform miracles. In this article, I will talk a bit about the advantages of knowing and using it, and, as a bonus, show its “visual” and more manageable form: Ansible Tower.

Advantages of Ansible

• It is free and open-source;
• It is compatible with various operating systems, such as Linux, Unix, and Windows;
• It can be deployed anywhere, such as local servers or in the cloud, whether public or private;
• Extremely scalable, capable of managing thousands of servers at once;
• Encrypted remote access to systems;
• Fast deployment, done in a few minutes;
• Low execution time;
• Customizable and adaptable, meeting various needs;
• It has a vast active community, ensuring support and constant development of new features.

Keeping in mind the advantages of using Ansible, how does the tool itself work? It uses a coding language to create its Playbooks (set of tasks to be executed) called YAML, which is very simple to learn.

In its official documentation, it is possible to find several ready-made and customizable templates to use. Each automation can be organized and divided in a few ways, the main ones being Playbooks and Roles.

• Playbooks: Single files with the tasks that will be executed on the desired servers. Ideal for simple tasks, such as creating, editing, or removing users across multiple servers.
• Roles: Predefined playbooks, templates, and variables that work together using separate files. Ideal for automations containing a large number of tasks, allowing them to be divided into several files. It improves the organization of your projects.

Ansible Tower

Now that we have talked about the tool, let’s get to know its complement, Ansible Tower, a powerful web application for the deployment and management of automation using Ansible.

With it, it is very easy to manage tasks and inventories. With a few clicks, it is already possible to create a task, schedule execution, and send notifications in case of execution failure, all through a simple and intuitive graphical interface. Impressive, isn’t it?

Although it is a paid tool, it has a free version named Ansible AWX, which has the same purpose and functions, however, with a slightly more complex implementation.

And us, Edgers? What is our commitment to this tool?

Since we value time spent, we give full attention to the activities we do daily, always thinking about how we can make them “less manual.” Thus, we spend more time creating new projects than doing the same thing over and over.