This Article will give you an Idea that how advancement and Automation made the Configuration of…
By: Akanksha Singh
Tags: Trivago, Article Writing, Ansible, Ansible Playbook

This Article will give you an Idea that how advancement and Automation made the Configuration of System an easy task. Here we will talk about “Automation Using Ansible”, and How Trivago, an international Hotel and Travelling Agency using Ansible to get Automated Operability and Availability of Service with lower latency with best deals to the customers.

Automation is there in the world of IT from decades but Ansible is mainly designed for “Configuration Management”, the tool come to market with High Scalability and ability to kick Start the business, without giving high wages to employees and just Making Scripts to keep on configuring each node started by the Load Balancers.

Now the question arises what all Ansible is providing as automation, Can we rely on it for all the Steps of Configuration Management ?

The answer is Straight forward but let’s understand by the features of Ansible :-

1️⃣ Configuration Management :

Ansible used to centralized the Configuration using file management for the common steps used for configuring a particular Software inside a System. Only we need to declare the Steps / Tasks inside a file that is further run to deploy the instructions on a particular or a group of System.

2️⃣ Application Deployment :

From development to Production all the life cycle could be achieved and managed efficiently using Ansible. Just one need to define their set of Application in Ansible then the deployment is done with “Ansible Tower”.

3️⃣ Provisioning :

Application can be deployed or installed on system using Ansible. Even the Red Hat Ansible tower helps in the process of Provisioning System, Either you have to start the bare metal or virtual machine or an instance over cloud.

4️⃣ Continuous Delivery:

Ansible Playbook keep the application deployment proper and manage throughout the entire life Cycle, even can be use in Sage Maker.

5️⃣ Security and Compliance:

Scanning and Remediation of site wide security policies can be integrated into other automated processes. The security policies must be defined inside the Ansible Playbook to be deployed on the Target / Managed System.

6️⃣ Orchestration :

The interaction of multiple configured system must be defined, here I mean the link between different set of Tasks to be performed to completely install or configure an Application. Example: If an apache web server is been configured inside target nodes then the steps performed one after the other must be integrated and have to move serially.

7️⃣ Idempotence Nature:

If a mentioned Task in Ansible Playbook is done already then to save the resources Ansible has various modules which are idempotent in nature. For managing the Idempotence behavior with other modules ansible has a concept named “Handler”.

8️⃣ Replication :

Configuration management makes it easy to replicate environments with the exact same software and configurations. This enables you to effectively build a multistage ecosystem, with production, development, and testing servers.

9️⃣ Abstraction :

Ansible works on RAL concept i.e Resource Abstraction Layer. The modules and Ansible Architecture itself is built to support this. It uses concept of IAS i.e Infrastructure as Code. Which will work on all the Types of Operation System with any kind of version.

Concluding all the Above features we can Now say that :

“ Ansible is an Open Source automation Platform. It is a simple automation language that can perfectly described as IT application infrastructure in Ansible Playbook. It is also an automation engine that runs Ansible Playbooks.

Ansible can manage powerful automation tasks and can adapt to many different workflows and environment.”

Some Other Facts about Ansible:

✔ Ansible Playbooks are human readable automation code that perfectly describe an IT application infrastructure Configuration.

✔ Ansible is Agentless: i.e. it connect to hosts to manage the configuration/provisioning/monitoring using protocols Like OpenSSH or WinRM to run a set of task. Only the host need to have the Specified Modules which internally append with Ansible code (playbook) and achieve the required tasks.

✔ Agentless Architecture and work on Push Mechanism. Administrator can use Ansible playbook / Ad Hoc Commands

✔ Playbooks are designed to be idempotent. To run Arbitrary commands we have multiple modules available

✔ Ansible is framed on Python Language. Founder/Developer of Ansible: Michael Dehaan

✔ Ansible is a part of DevOps Tool Stack Kit which is used for Configuration management. Ansible could be defined as “Language of DevOps” which helps Operation team and even development team to configure the setup for Testing or Production at any point of time by simply running a playbook with Static or dynamic inventory support.

✔ The perfect description of application could be done by Ansible Playbook with all the aspects of application environment can be described and documented. Ansible Playbooks are just a plaintext files that runs regardless of the location of the infrastructure. These Playbooks are written in YAML format in text files.

✔ The Ansible Architecture is agentless which is most suited to get the application deployed of the configured environment and get “FAST TO MARKET” which is the only goal of this tool.