What is Ansible, and What is it used for?

Introduction

Automating tedious tasks makes developers’ responsibilities more manageable, allowing them to focus on other activities that benefit the organization and if we talk about automation, Ansible is a great strength. It is becoming extremely relevant among automation tools and has become the number-one choice for software automation in many organizations.

It provides a centralized platform to automate configuration management and deployment processes, reducing manual errors and increasing efficiency, which has revolutionized the way IT infrastructure is managed and configured. Additionally, it also gained huge popularity in the CCIE DevNet track as it allows automating network infrastructure operations in an easy and efficient manner. In this blog, you will learn about what is Ansible used for, how it works and much more in detail, but before that let us understand what it actually is.

Looking to land a high-demand DevNet role? Mastering these tools is a critical step. DevNet Expert training provides a comprehensive curriculum that dives deep into Ansible’s capabilities and its application in network automation.

What is Ansible?

Ansible is an automation tool or platform that simplify the process of managing and deploying software applications and IT infrastructure and provides automation solutions to administrators, operators, and IT decision makers across various technical disciplines. It allows to save time at work while improving the scalability, stability and dependability of an IT infrastructure. It is introduced for IT specialists who use it for updates of workstations and servers, application deployment, cloud provisioning, intra-service orchestration configuration management and almost everything system managers do regularly.

Furthermore, it is an agentless system that executes actions over a remote SSH or Windows remote management connection and has no additional security infrastructure, so it is easy to deploy. It uses a simple, human-readable language called YAML (YAML is not a markup language) to describe automation tasks in the form of playbooks.

These playbooks define a series of steps or tasks that need to be executed on a remote system, known as a host. Unlike more simple management tools, its users can leverage Ansible automation to install software, automate daily tasks, provision infrastructure, improve security and compliance, and share automation across the enterprise.

How Ansible Works?

Ansible works by connecting to nodes and pushing out small programs known as ansible modules. It then implements these modules over SSH by default and then eliminates them when finished.

The Ansible management node is the control node, which handles the complete implementation of the playbook. It is the node from which users are performing the installation, and the inventory file provides a list of hosts where the module needs to run. The management node allows SSH connections, and then it applies the module to the host machines and installs the product and once installed it removes the module.

Now, let’s discuss what is Ansible used for.

What is Ansible used for?

Some of the significant use cases of it in an organization are:

Ansible for DevOps

Ansible is the most popular DevOps tool because it allows orchestration, automation, configuration, and IT infrastructure management. It provides customization and scaling according to demand and helps automate implementing internally created applications in production programs to make DevOps easier. In DevOps, it allows rapid deployments, IT architectures are coordinated, installations are reliable, and feedback loops move faster.

Managing Docker Containers

Docker is a high-performance framework used to efficiently create and deploy containers on servers and local devices. With its straightforward design, Ansible offers a robust collection of capabilities and integral modules that allow it to create automation scripts that help create tasks and run them in preferred settings more easily.

For Automation

It is primarily used for automation and the first step to automate the operational service lifecycle of your application is to automate any hardware deployment. It can automate IT infrastructure on virtualization platforms, bare metal servers, and cloud servers. Additionally, it can automate the setup of multiple systems, databases, device storage devices, firewalls, and networks.

Configuration Management

Ansible is an easy, reliable, and continuous configuration management solution that provides granular infrastructure data that humans can read and process with computers. With just a password or an SSH (Secure Socket Shell) key, anyone can start monitoring machines.

Installing Web Applications

With Ansible, deployment of multiple applications becomes simple and quick, and there is no need to manually set up the application on each machine. It uses SSH to communicate with the remote network and execute all instructions when the module is launched from the control device.

Moving on, let’s discuss its features.

Ansible Features

Some of the key features of Ansible are –

• It is agentless software, meaning it doesn’t rely on agents or additional custom security infrastructure, making it easy and quick to deploy.
• There is no need for a database because the module library can reside on any system.
• Without any additional setup, developers can work on the instance immediately when the instance is ready.
• It follows a very simple language structure known as Playbooks, which is like easy English for describing automation jobs.
• Models IT infrastructure within interconnected systems, thus ensuring faster results.
• It can be written in any programming language, such as Ruby and Python, as it has a feature that allows user-created modules. It also adds new server-side behavior that extends Ansible’s connection types through the Python API.

Ansible Architecture

Here’s a look at the many components that make up the Ansible framework.

Modules

Modules are critical software that Ansible distributes from one command computer to all nodal network points or remote hosts. They are predefined instructions that are applied directly to the remote host. Playbooks run modules that maintain applications, packages, and files. Ansible invokes all modules to deliver updates or perform the required activity and disconnects them after completion.

It has over 450 modules for specific tasks. It contains hundreds of built-in modules and code that run when a playbook is launched. A playbook consists of plays, consisting of various tasks, consisting of modules.

Playbook

Playbooks are task-specific user guides for Ansible. Playbooks direct the workflow because the tasks written in them are executed in the order they are written. They are simple text documents built in YAML, a data serialization language that humans understand.

They are at the heart of what makes it so popular because they explain the tasks the user needs to perform quickly without the need to remember terminology. In addition to being able to describe settings, they can also organize the steps of any manually organized task and operate tasks concurrently or sequentially.

Plugins

Plugins are small pieces of code that extend the functionality of a website. Ansible comes with many of these, but user can create their own. Plugins in this case are a specific type of module and before running the module on the nodes, the plugins are run.

• To reduce the cost of fact-gathering processes, cache plugins are used.
• Action plugins are front-end modules that perform operations on the controller system before invoking the module directly.

Inventories

The inventory includes all the nodes or hosts that need to be taken care of, along with their IP addresses, databases, server details, and other information. All machines (controls and nodes) used with Ansible are listed in a single, easy-to-read file containing this comprehensive data. After registering the inventory, one can assign parameters to multiple hosts through a simple text-based format.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

One can use an application programming interface or API to extend Ansible’s connection options. It includes extending callbacks and other functionalities in addition to using SSH for transmission. Its API serves as a medium for public and private cloud applications.

Host and Networking

Hosts are nodal structures that take advantage of the data model unique to the Ansible Automation Engine and can cross multiple hardware platforms without much difficulty.

Cloud

A private or public cloud is a collection of remotely located servers that a person can use to collect, organize, and process information. Instead of keeping the data on a local server, these systems are hosted on the Internet. It deploys cloud resources and instances, connects them to the database, and can handle jobs remotely.

Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

CMDB is a database that serves as a data repository for IT systems. By deploying Ansible-CMDB code, users can automatically transfer the results of Ansible’s data-collection tasks to a static HTML summary page. 

Benefits of Ansible

Here are some benefits associated with ansible –

• Agentless: Automation does not require any other software or firewall ports to be installed on the client system. Additionally, there is no need to set up a separate management structure.
• Easy to set up: No special coding skills are required to use its playbooks (more on playbooks later).
• Powerful: It lets users model even more complex IT workflows.
• Flexible: It allows the entire application environment to be managed, regardless of where it is deployed and can be tailored based on user requirements.
• Efficient: There is more space for application resources on your server because no additional software needs to be installed.

It offers a lot of benefits, but like any tool, it also has its drawbacks.

Drawbacks of Ansible

Some of the drawbacks associated with Ansible are –

• Performance overhead: While its agentless architecture simplifies setup and management, it can introduce performance overhead, especially in large-scale deployments with multiple managed nodes.
• Limited real-time monitoring: It focuses primarily on configuration management and automation rather than real-time monitoring and reactive feedback.
• Playbook Complexity: While it promotes simplicity, complex automation tasks or complex workflows can result in verbose and complex playbooks, which can be challenging to maintain and debug over time.
• Learning curve for advanced features: While the basics of Ansible are easy to understand, advanced features like roles, dynamic lists, and Jinja templating may require additional time and effort to master.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1 – What is the main purpose of Ansible?

The primary purpose of Ansible is to automate provisioning, application deployment, configuration management, orchestration, and many other IT processes.

Q2 – What issues does Ansible solve?

Ansible allows to streamline automation and configuration management across the enterprise by supporting six critical use cases:

• Application Deployment
• Network Automation
• Cloud Provisioning
• Orchestration
• Configuration Management
• Security Automation

Q3 – Why Ansible is the best?

Because it provides an automation tool that is simple, powerful, and agentless. Also, powerful functions in many IT domains do not require special coding skills.

Q4 – How much memory does Ansible use?

Ansible uses 4 GB of memory per 100 forks to avoid potential resource conflicts.

Conclusion

Ansible is an open-source tool for provisioning, application deployment, and configuration management that allows saving time, money, and effort by automating tasks across multiple servers. It is essential for developers and operations engineers to understand tools like these. Therefore, in this blog, we have discussed it in-depth, like what it is, how it works, what is Ansible used for, its features, its architecture, and its advantages and disadvantages.