What is ansible?
By: Sahid Khan
Tags: Redhat Linux, Ansible, Ansible Playbook, Linux

Ansible is an open-source software provisioning, configuration management, and application-deployment tool enabling infrastructure as code. It runs on many Unix-like systems and can configure both Unix-like systems as well as Microsoft Windows.

As customers embrace the DevOps model to accelerate application deployment and achieve higher efficiency in operating their data centers, the infrastructure needs to change and respond faster than ever to business needs. These changes can help you achieve an agile operational model by improving automation, innovation, and consistency

Ansible works over SSH and doesn’t require any daemons, special servers, or libraries to work. A text editor and a command-line tool are usually enough to get your work done.

HOW ANSIBLE WORKS:

Ansible is a radically simple IT automation engine that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, and many other IT needs.

Designed for multi-tier deployments since day one, Ansible models your IT infrastructure by describing how all of your systems inter-relate, rather than just managing one system at a time.

EFFICIENT ARCHITECTURE

Ansible works by connecting to your 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.

Your library of modules can reside on any machine, and there are no servers, daemons, or databases required. Typically you’ll work with your favorite terminal program, a text editor, and probably a version control system to keep track of changes to your content.

Ansible Terms:

✨Users: Users who create the Ansible playbook have a direct connection with the ansible automation Engine.

✨ Ansible playbook: It also interacts with the ansible automation engine and configuration Management Database

✨Public or Private cloud: They help in interacting with all the modules and API with this but also with the entire cloud which proves that it has security measures as well.

✨Inventory: Inventory which is a part of the automation engine helps in provisioning and internal provisioning using automation.

✨API: It helps in creating the necessary API for the interaction of end to end modules.

✨Modules: The modules are directly run using playbooks the modules can control all services, packages, AWS cloud formation, etc.

✨Plugins: All necessary cache, logging purpose, ansibles functioning all help in creating augmented ansible’s core.

✨Networking: It helps to automate different networks that make use of all agentless frames and generate useful configurations.

✨Hosts: Hosts here refers to the machines like Linux or Unix machines which are getting automated using Ansible.

MAIN REASON OF USING ANSIBLE:

the reason is, ansible has some extra feature, it provides something else due to which it’s so famous from past 5–6 years.

And this extra thing is INTELLIGENCE.

Modules provide intelligence to the ansible.

Ansible works on Declarative Language. Here you only have to tell you what to do. Don’t need to tell it how to do it.

🎡 VMWARE:

THE SIMPLICITY OF ANSIBLE MEETS THE POWER OF VMWARE

You’ve made a significant investment in your VMware infrastructure, but your digital transformation objectives likely still haven’t been met. These objectives require a new way of thinking about IT management — one that allows operations to deliver on the demands of the business. In maximizing your VMware investment, IT organizations must effectively answer:

How will we build in flexibility to keep our platform and infrastructure options open?

Do the solutions we use to deliver value and promote organizational change?

Ansible maximizes your VMware investment

Make it possible to do more with what you already have. Ansible will help you automate your VMware infrastructure and accelerate the process from development to production.

Changing the economics of virtualization

Many enterprises' IT teams have an operations team managing the VMware infrastructure and second-team deploying apps to this environment. Using Ansible with VMware allows your team to enable a simple self-service IT model across all environments. In addition, Red Hat® Ansible® Tower can be used as a common tool across both teams, reducing complexity. The operations team can write Ansible Playbooks and job templates to describe the environments and the App team can build environments and deploy apps with a single button click.

When you automate, you accelerate

With Ansible, one member of your team can figure out how to solve a problem, automate the solution with Ansible, and then everyone knows how to solve the problem. Expanding automation to allow everyone to participate will ensure you get the most out of your existing infrastructure, and will prepare your organization for tools such as a cloud manager — helping you realize even greater benefits.

ANSIBLE IS GLUE FOR VMWARE AND DEVOPS

Chances are VMware isn’t your only infrastructure tool. With Ansible’s extensive list of integrations and capabilities, you’ll be able to model nearly any process in your IT organization, and you can use the same tools you have today.

Over half of our customers are using Ansible on VMware today, and they’re using it to glue together complicated workflows that encompass (for instance) a physical network, build systems such as Jenkins or Bamboo, a monitoring service, and finally, a firewall and load balancer — all while ensuring everything is configured exactly the right way each and every time. And when you’re ready to go hybrid, Ansible’s broad support for cloud providers is ready.

AUTOMATE VSPHERE, EXTEND CAPABILITIES OF VREALIZE AUTOMATION

Out of the box, Ansible ships with over 50 VMware modules supporting most use cases, including:

Managing vSphere datacenters, clusters, hosts, and guests

VM template and snapshot management

vSwitches, DNS settings, firewall rules, and NAT gateway rules

Ansible also ships with integrations to support physical network devices for all leading vendors. Additionally, NSX modules are available for teams looking to automate network virtualization.

Many VMware customers use vRealize Automation (vRA) to automate the provisioning of VMs and would prefer to use Ansible Tower for orchestration and application deployment. Through a partnership with SovLabs, the power of Ansible Tower is now accessible from vRA, enabling advanced provisioning and ongoing Day 2 management functions. The combination of vRA and Ansible Tower expands the scope of possible automation for customers — in a manner that is faster and simpler than was previously possible.