How industries are solving challenges using Ansible.
Tags: Ansible, Industry

This blog is about ansible for solving different challenges industries uses ansible so, first we find out

what is Ansible ?

Ansible may be a configuration management system written in Python employing a declarative terminology to explain configurations. It is wont to automate software configuration and deployment. Ansible could even be a radically simple IT automation engine that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, and far of other IT needs.

Designed for multi-tier deployments since day one, Ansible models works thereon infrastructure by describing how all of our systems inter-relate, instead of just managing one system at a time.

Ansible Architecture :

Ansible works by connecting to our nodes and pushing out small programs, called “Ansible modules” to them. These programs are written to be resource models of the desired state of the system. Ansible then executes these modules (over SSH by default), and removes them when finished.

Important Terms in Ansible :

Ansible Playbooks :

Ordered lists of tasks, saved so we can run those tasks in that order repeatedly. Playbooks can include variables as well as tasks. Playbooks are written in YAML and are easy to read, write, share and understand.

Inventory :

A list of managed nodes. An inventory file is also sometimes called a “hostfile”. Our inventory can specify information like IP address for each managed node. An inventory can also organize managed nodes.

Control Node :

Any machine with Ansible installed is known as controller node. we can run Ansible commands and playbooks by invoking the ansible or ansible-playbook command from any control node. we can use any computer that has a Python installation as a control node - laptops, shared desktops, and servers can all run Ansible. However, we cannot use a Windows machine as a control node. we can have multiple control nodes.

Managed Node:

The network devices (and/or servers) we manage with Ansible. Managed nodes are also sometimes called “hosts”. Ansible is not installed on managed nodes.

Tasks: The units of action in Ansible. we can execute a single task once with an ad-hoc command. A task block defines a single procedure to be executed on the server like installing packages.

Modules: These are little programs that act as building blocks encapsulating common tasks such as using yum to install packages or ping to test the connection to a remote host.

Ansible Workflow :

As the services increase, system admins will provision more servers to do configuration management. They need to install Ansible on the master node where they need to write the code into the Ansible playbook to describe the setup, installation process, and the configuration required for these servers.

The local machine connects to these servers (nodes) through an inventory using secured SSH connections.

Once these nodes are connected to the master server, then the node servers are analyzed and the playbook codes are pushed toward each of the servers so that these playbooks can configure the servers remotely, which leads to a consistent environment.

Benefits of Using Ansible :

1. Agentless: As long as a connection can be SSHed and it has Python, it can be configured with Ansible; No agent/software or additional firewall ports are required to install on our client or host systems for automation. Also, we don’t have to worry about setting up and managing the infrastructure.

2. Simple: As we’ve seen, Ansible uses a very simple syntax written in YAML known as playbooks — YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) is a human-readable data serialization language. We don’t need special coding skills to code and understand playbooks. It is very easy to install and execute tasks in order.

3. Modular: Ansible is modular as we require only one program per script. This way, we can spread our programs across different servers.

4. Efficient: Not requiring any extra software on our servers means that there is more space for our resources.

5. Powerful and flexible: Having powerful features gives us the capability to model even complex IT workflows in lesser time, along with managing infrastructure, networks, operating systems, and services that are already in use.