Ansible's Features and Capabilities
Configuration Management
Ansible is designed to be very simple reliable, and consistent for configuration management. Ansible Configuration are simple data description of infrastructure and are both readable by humans ans parse-able by machine. All you need to start managing system is a password or an SSH(Secure Socket Shell, a network protocol )key.
An example of how easy Ansible makes configuration management: if you want to install an updated version of a specific type of software on all the machines in your enterprise, all you have to do is write out all the IP addresses of the nodes (also called remote hosts) and write an Ansible playbook to install it on all the nodes, then run the playbook from your control machine.,
Application Deployment
Ansible lets you quickly and easily deploy multi-tier apps. You won’t need to write custom code to automate your systems; you list the tasks required to be done by writing a playbook, and Ansible will figure out how to get your systems to the state you want them to be in. In other words, you won’t have to configure the applications on every machine manually. When you run a playbook from your control machine, Ansible uses SSH to communicate with the remote hosts and run all the commands (tasks).
Orchestration
As the name suggests, orchestration involves bringing different elements into a beautifully run whole operation—similar to the way a musical conductor brings the notes produced by all the different instruments into a cohesive artistic work. For example, with application deployment, you need to manage not just the front-end and backend services but the databases, networks, storage, and so on. You also need to make sure that all the tasks are handled in the proper order. Ansible uses automated workflows, provisioning, and more to make orchestrating tasks easy. And once you’ve defined your infrastructure using the Ansible playbooks, you can use that same orchestration wherever you need to, thanks to the portability of Ansible playbooks.
Security and Compliance
As with application deployment, site wide security policies (such as firewall rules or locking down users) can be implemented along with other automated processes. If you configure the security details on the control machine and run the associated playbook, all the remote hosts will automatically be updated with those details. That means you won’t need to monitor each machine for security compliance continually manually. And for extra security, an admin’s user ID and password aren’t retrievable in plain text on Ansible.
Cloud Provisioning
The first step in automating your applications’ life cycle is automating the provisioning of your infrastructure. With Ansible, you can provision cloud platforms, virtualized hosts, network devices, and bare-metal servers.
Ansible Architecture
Inventory
Inventory is lists of nodes or hosts having their IP addresses, databases, servers, etc. which are need to be managed.
API's
The Ansible API's works as the transport for the public or private cloud services.
Modules
Ansible connected the nodes and spread out the Ansible modules programs. Ansible executes the modules and removed after finished. These modules can reside on any machine; no database or servers are required here. You can work with the chose text editor or a terminal or version control system to keep track of the changes in the content.
Plugins
Plugins is a piece of code that expends the core functionality of Ansible. There are many useful plugins, and you also can write your own.
Playbooks
Playbooks consist of your written code, and they are written in YAML format, which describes the tasks and executes through the Ansible. Also, you can launch the tasks synchronously and asynchronously with playbooks.
Hosts
In the Ansible architecture, hosts are the node systems, which are automated by Ansible, and any machine such as RedHat, Linux, Windows, etc.
Networking
Ansible is used to automate different networks, and it uses the simple, secure, and powerful agentless automation framework for IT operations and development. It uses a type of data model which separated from the Ansible automation engine that spans the different hardware quite easily.
Cloud
A cloud is a network of remote servers on which you can store, manage, and process the data. These servers are hosted on the internet and storing the data remotely rather than the local server. It just launches the resources and instances on the cloud, connect them to the servers, and you have good knowledge of operating your tasks remotely.
CMDB
CMDB is a type of repository which acts as a data warehouse for the IT installations.
