Automation is the most important intervention in the technology field. Automation of redundant tasks in manufacturing or business processes can lead to productivity improvements. Different tools and platforms for automating and managing automated systems and processes are essential. You need to know the basics of Ansible and its functions before you can install it.
Ansible, an open-source automation tool, is powerful and easy to use. It can be used for deployment, management, configuration, and management of software applications on nodes. Ansible can also serve as a configuration management software that administrators and operations systems use to maintain effective control over multiple servers.
Ansible is trusted despite the availability of many well-known configuration management systems like Chef and Puppet. This is due to the Ansible best practices, which are smaller overheads and more reliable. Ansible certifications are more popular among professionals. This discussion will provide insight into the process of installing and configuring Ansible. The report will also provide information on the workings and uses of Ansible to support the discussion.
Understanding the Workings of Ansible
This discussion should begin with the functioning of Ansible. Ansible is able to configure client machines on computers that have installed and configured Ansible components. Ansible uses the normal SSH channels to communicate with remote machines and copy files. Ansible doesn’t require any additional software to be installed on client computers.
Ansible could accept servers with an exposed SSH port, regardless of its stage in life. Ansible could work with any computer that can be administered via SSH. Before installing Ansible, it is important to be aware of the modular approach of Ansible.
The modular approach allows for the extension of functionalities of the main systems to address specific scenarios. Modules can be written in any language. Communication between modules follows the JSON standard. Because of their expressive nature and similarity with other markup languages, the configuration files are primarily documented using the YAML data serialization format.
Ansible allows interaction with hosts via configuration scripts and command-line tools. Playbooks are the name of configuration scripts and are mentioned in nearly every Ansible tutorial. DevOps engineers and system administrators should be involved in managing complex IT infrastructure across multiple sites and on the cloud.
Modern applications that have a front-end service, a database service, or an APO service are complex systems to manage. Complex systems can lead to errors and more time consumption. Ansible offers IT automation to automate the provisioning and deployment of IT infrastructure, as well as managing changes to services configuration.
Ansible’s IT automation approach is largely based on the ‘playbook. A closer look at any Ansible tutorial will reveal that the Ansible playbook acts as a recipe. The Ansible playbooks provide instructions on how to set up your IT infrastructure, deploy applications, and configure services.
Ansible is very popular due to its easy learning curve. An important feature to note before installing Ansible is its agentlessness. You don’t need to install or manage Ansible clients on managed nodes. This functionality makes it much easier to manage Ansible updates.
We have provided a detailed article about How Ansible Works.
Configuring and Installing Ansible
Before you install or configure Ansible, the prerequisites are what you need to be aware of. Ansible installation requires a control system. You should now know that Ansible can be installed on Ubuntu, Debian Linux Mint, Linux Mint or Fedora Linux distributions.
This is due to the fact that Windows machines cannot be used as control machines. Ansible uses SSH to manage remote machines. You must also consider the prerequisite of two or more Ubuntu Servers in order to install Ansible.
Two or more Ubuntu 18.04 servers will serve as one Ansible server. The remaining servers would be Ansible hosts. Each server should have a nonro