Ansible (software)

Ansible
Original author(s) Michael DeHaan
Developer(s) Ansible Community / Ansible Inc. / Red Hat Inc.
Initial release February 20, 2012 (2012-02-20)
Stable release
2.7.0 / October 4, 2018 (2018-10-04)[1]
Preview release
2.7.0rc4 / September 28, 2018 (2018-09-28)[1]
Repository
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Written in Python, PowerShell, Shell, Ruby
Operating system Linux, Unix-like, MacOS, Windows
Available in English
Type Configuration management, Infrastructure as Code, Orchestration engine
License Proprietary / GNU General Public License
Website www.ansible.com

Ansible is open source software that automates software provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment.[2] Ansible connects via SSH, remote PowerShell or via other remote APIs.

History

Michael DeHaan, the author of the provisioning server application Cobbler and co-author of the Func framework for remote administration, developed the platform.[3] It is included as part of the Fedora distribution of Linux, owned by Red Hat Inc., and is also available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Scientific Linux and Oracle Linux via Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) as well as for other operating systems.[4]

Ansible, Inc. (originally AnsibleWorks, Inc.) was the company set up to commercially support and sponsor Ansible.[5][6] Red Hat acquired Ansible in October 2015.[7][8]

The name "Ansible" refers to a fictional instantaneous hyperspace communication system (as featured in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game (1985),[9][10] and originally conceived by Ursula K. Le Guin for her novel Rocannon's World (1966)).[11]

Architecture

As with most configuration management software, Ansible has two types of servers: controlling machines and nodes. First, there is a single controlling machine which is where orchestration begins. Nodes are managed by a controlling machine over SSH. The controlling machine describes the location of nodes through its inventory.[12]

To orchestrate nodes, Ansible deploys modules to nodes over SSH. Modules are temporarily stored in the nodes and communicate with the controlling machine through a JSON protocol over the standard output.[13] When Ansible is not managing nodes, it does not consume resources because no daemons or programs are executing for Ansible in the background.[14]

In contrast with popular configuration management software — such as Chef, Puppet, and CFEngine — Ansible uses an agentless architecture.[14] With an agent-based architecture, nodes must have a locally installed daemon that communicates with a controlling machine. With an agentless architecture, nodes are not required to install and run background daemons to connect with a controlling machine. This type of architecture reduces the overhead on the network by preventing the nodes from polling the controlling machine.[14]

Design goals

The design goals of Ansible include:[13]

  • Minimal in nature. Management systems should not impose additional dependencies on the environment.[14]
  • Consistent. With Ansible one should be able to create consistent environments.
  • Secure. Ansible does not deploy agents to nodes. Only OpenSSH and Python are required on the managed nodes.[14][15]
  • Highly reliable. When carefully written, an Ansible playbook can be idempotent, in order to prevent unexpected side-effects on the managed systems.[16] It should be noted, however, that it is entirely possible to have a poorly written playbook that is not idempotent.
  • Minimal learning required. Playbooks use an easy and descriptive language based on YAML and Jinja templates.

Modules

Modules are mostly standalone and can be written in a standard scripting language (such as Python, Perl, Ruby, Bash, etc.). One of the guiding properties of modules is idempotency, which means that even if an operation is repeated multiple times (e.g., upon recovery from an outage), it will always place the system into the same state.[13]

Inventory configuration

The Inventory is a description of the nodes that can be accessed by Ansible. By default, the Inventory is described by a configuration file, in INI or YAML format[17], whose default location is in /etc/ansible/hosts. The configuration file lists either the IP address or hostname of each node that is accessible by Ansible. In addition, nodes can be assigned to groups.[12]

An example inventory:

192.168.6.1

[webservers]
foo.example.com
bar.example.com

This configuration file specifies three nodes: the first node is specified by an IP address and the latter two nodes are specified by hostnames. Additionally, the latter two nodes are grouped under the webservers group.

Ansible can also use a custom Dynamic Inventory script, which can dynamically pull data from a different system.[18]

Playbooks

Playbooks are YAML files that express configurations, deployment, and orchestration in Ansible, [19] and allows Ansible to perform operations on managed nodes. Each Playbook maps a group of hosts to a set of roles. Each role is represented by calls to Ansible tasks.[20]

Ansible Tower

Ansible Tower is a REST API, web service, and web-based console designed to make Ansible more usable for IT teams with members of different technical proficiencies and skill sets. It is a hub for automation tasks. Tower is a commercial product supported by Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat announced during AnsibleFest 2016 that it would release Tower as open source software.[21][22]

Ansible Tower was open sourced as AWX in September 2017.

There is also an open source alternative to Tower, Semaphore, written in Go.[23][24]

Platform support

Control machines have to be a Linux/Unix host (for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Debian, CentOS, OS X, BSD, Ubuntu[4]), and Python 2.6 or 2.7 is required (Python 3 support is available as a tech preview since ansible 2.2[25]).

Managed nodes, if they are Unix-like, must have Python 2.4 or later. For managed nodes with Python 2.5 or earlier, the python-simplejson package is also required.[26] Since version 1.7, Ansible can also manage Windows[27] nodes.[26] In this case, native PowerShell remoting supported by the WS-Management protocol is used, instead of SSH.

Cloud integration

Ansible can deploy to bare metal hosts, virtualized systems and cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services, Atomic, CenturyLink, Cloudscale, CloudStack, DigitalOcean, Dimension Data, Docker, Google Cloud Platform, KVM, Linode, LXC, LXD, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, OVH, oVirt, Packet, Profitbricks, PubNub, Rackspace, Scaleway, SmartOS, SoftLayer, Univention, VMware, Webfaction, and XenServer.[13][28]

AnsibleFest

AnsibleFest[29] is an annual conference of the Ansible community of users, contributors, etc.

Year Location
2016 London
2016 San Francisco
2016 Brooklyn
2017 London
2017 San Francisco
2018 Austin, Texas

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Releases - ansible/ansible". Retrieved 4 October 2018 – via GitHub.
  2. ↑ Staff writer. "Overview - How Ansible Works". ansible.com. Red Hat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  3. ↑ Maughan, Mike (April 17, 2012). "An Interview with Ansible Author Michael DeHaan". coloandcloud.com. Maughansem LLC. p. 1. Retrieved November 5, 2012.
  4. 1 2 Ulianytskyi, Mykola. "ansible Download (DEB, RPM, TGZ, TXZ, XZ)". pkgs.org. Linux Packages Search. p. 1. Retrieved November 5, 2012.
  5. ↑ "About Ansible". Ansible, Inc. p. 1. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  6. ↑ Bloomberg Research. "Ansible, Inc.: Private Company Information". Internet Software and Services. Bloomberg L.P. p. 1. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
  7. ↑ Novet, Jordan (October 15, 2015). "Source: Red Hat is buying Ansible for more than $100M". venturebeat.com. VentureBeat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved October 16, 2015.
  8. ↑ Staff writer (October 16, 2015). "Red Hat to Acquire IT Automation and DevOps Leader Ansible". redhat.com. Red Hat, Inc. Retrieved October 16, 2015.
  9. ↑ Ansible Community. "Frequently Asked Questions". docs.ansible.com. Ansible Documentation. Red Hat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved April 30, 2013.
  10. ↑ DeHaan, Michael (January 29, 2014). "Google Groups Post - Ansible Project". groups.google.com. p. 1. Retrieved April 26, 2017.
  11. ↑ Bernardo, Susan; Murphy, Graham J (2006). Ursula K. Le Guin : a critical companion. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. p. 18. ISBN 9780313027307. OCLC 230345464. Retrieved 2017-09-27.
  12. 1 2 Ansible Community. "Inventory". docs.ansible.com. Ansible Documentation. Red Hat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
  13. 1 2 3 4 "Ansible in Depth" (PDF). Red Hat, Inc. p. 5.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 "The Benefits of Agentless Architecture" (PDF). Red Hat, Inc. p. 5.
  15. ↑ http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/intro_installation.html#managed-node-requirements
  16. ↑ "Achieving Rolling Updates and Continuous Deployment with Zero Downtime" (PDF). Red Hat, Inc. p. 7.
  17. ↑ http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/intro_inventory.html
  18. ↑ Ansible Community. "Dynamic Inventory". docs.ansible.com. Ansible Documentation. Red Hat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  19. ↑ Ansible Community. "Playbooks". docs.ansible.com. Ansible Documentation. Red Hat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
  20. ↑ Ansible Community. "Task And Handler Organization For A Role". docs.ansible.com. Ansible Documentation. Red Hat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  21. ↑ Redditors (February 19, 2016). "Ansible announces Tower to be Open Source in the near future on AnsibleFest!". reddit.com. Reddit. p. 1. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  22. ↑ Staff writer. "The Open Tower Project". ansible.com/open-tower. Red Hat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved January 21, 2017.
  23. ↑ Semaphore community. "Semaphore API". ansible-semaphore.github.io. p. 1. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  24. ↑ Semaphore community. "ansible-semaphore". github.com/ansible-semaphore. Castaway Consulting LLC. Retrieved January 21, 2017.
  25. ↑ Ansible Community. "Python 3 Support". docs.ansible.com. Ansible Documentation. Red Hat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  26. 1 2 Ansible Community. "Getting started". docs.ansible.com. Ansible Documentation. Red Hat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
  27. ↑ DeHaan, Michael (August 6, 2014). "Ansible 1.7 is released - Windows beta and more!". ansible.com/blog. The Inside Playbook. Ansible, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  28. ↑ Ansible Community. "List of cloud modules". docs.ansible.com. Ansible Documentation. Red Hat, Inc. p. 1. Retrieved April 28, 2017.
  29. ↑ "AnsibleFest". Ansible. Red Hat, Inc. Retrieved October 4, 2018.
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