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.
In simple words ansible is just a tool provide declarative language to achive configuration management .
2)Why we use Ansible:
To build any environment or server we have to do configuration management and for doing it we have two options manual and automation and we have two ways to do automation using imperative or declarative language , ansible works on declarative language , we prefer ansible because in this we only need to tell what to do , how to do it is a part of ansible , it makes easy for user to work on it , we don’t need to remember commands of any os , and also we dont’s need to know the os on which we want to run our services .
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.
3)Where can we use Ansible :
🔑. It can be use to install services in as many os in just minutes .
🔑. Ansible is intelligent because of keyword which are module , used for package management they have many package module .
🔑. We can run host webservers .
🔑. We can run Hadoop services.
🔑. we can run httpd services.
🔑. we can do cloud computing for eg. AWS
🔑. we can run docker.
🔑. Ansible use YAML as a language
🔑. Ansible is intelligent tool but it also call cmd behind the seen.
🔑. Behind the seen ansible works on RAL( Resource Distraction Layer )
🔑. Industries use ansible because it save time , money , space and labor.
🔑. In Industries there are many computers and if they want to configure every computer as same or different it took so much effort and time to go to every PC and configure it , so industries use ansible in this case , ansible can configure as many PC at same time , saving time , as time is very essential part of any industry .
Benefits of Using Ansible :
- 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.
USE CASE- NASA using Ansible:
About NASA: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.
INTEGRATION : Cloud/AWS
USE CASES : Configuration Management
ISSUE: Increase efficiency, cloud migration
CHALLENGE : NASA needed to move roughly 65 applications from a traditional hardware based data center to a cloud-based environment for better agility and cost savings. The rapid timeline resulted in many applications being migrated ‘as-is’ to a cloud environment. This created an environment spanning multiple virtual private clouds (VPCs) and AWS accounts that could not be easily managed. Even simple things, like ensuring every system administrator had access to every server, or simple patching, were extremely burdensome.
SOLUTION : Leverage Ansible Tower to manage and schedule the cloud environment.
RESULTS :As a result of implementing Ansible Tower, NASA is better equipped to manage its AWS environment. Tower allowed NASA to provide better operations and security to its clients. It has also increased efficiency as a team. By the numbers:
a. Updating nasa.gov went from over 1 hour to under 5 minutes
b. Patching updates went from a multi-day process to 45 minutes
c. Achieving near real-time RAM and disk monitoring (accomplished without agents)
d. Provisioning OS Accounts across entire environment in under 10 minutes
e. Baselining standard AMIs went from 1 hour of manual configuration to becoming an invisible and seamless background process
f. Application stack set up from 1–2 hours to under 10 minutes per stack.
**NOTE** Every word is taken from internet and this specific use case is taken from ansible official document hence credit goes to the internet ..
THANK YOU!!
