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Simplest configuration management tool available out there
What do you like best about the product?
Ansible is an open source solution that makes configuring infrastructures an easy task for sysadmins. In the contrary to other configuration management tools, Ansible is very simple to get started with and it lowers the entry barrier to automation, all you need to write playbooks is a text editor. One of the powerful features of Ansible is that it is agent-less, which means there is no need to install any software on remote systems (especially your client's systems) in order to automate a task (installing a software stack) on these machines. Also, Ansible relies on the SSH protocol while other automation tools use their own protocols that may need special firewall ports to be opened. Furthermore, Ansible can be easily used with tools like Vagrant to automate the provisioning of development environments on local machine.
What do you dislike about the product?
The main drawback is the absence of an open source graphical interface for Ansible that make it easy to monitor the entire inventory. Ansible only provide an command line utility and the only GUI solution available seems to be Ansible Tower which is an enterprise solution. Ansible was recently bought by RedHat so this may raise questions on the direction the project will take in future.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We switched from Chef into Ansible to exclusively automating the provisioning of platforms on AWS (and other Cloud providers) and configuring application stacks for our clients. The stack range from RoR (Ruby on Rails) to Django web applications; to database management and clustering. The switching wasn't very painful, and Ansible helped us quickly writing new automation tasks. Furthermore, we gained a lot from the ability to use Vagrant along with Ansible in order to replicate production environment into the developer's machines and having a huge boost in terms of productivity, detecting bugs and fixing them quickly.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Ansible has excellent performance, it has no need for installing any agents on remote systems. it's based on python which is a well known language for scripting especially among the sysadmin community. Ansible is the way to go if these properties fit in your day-to-day requirements.
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Linux Automation
What do you like best about the product?
I love, that Ansible is Python based and provide very flexible way to configure any part of host configuration and it is free. I've widely used Ansible to deploy and configure various application in Linux. The great benefit, that Ansible does not require any agent and use ssh (you have to sort SSL related query on PRD). One more great advantage is that playbooks has defined structure and there are tons of addons in galaxy source.
What do you dislike about the product?
As Ansible is Python based, it is very much sensitive to code. So you should have exact number of spaces in each line or Ansible will fail.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Environment deployment Automation, preparing different changes on installed software, using templates for configures.
With Ansible we can follow Configuration as a Code conception and made our changes more predictable and easy to verify.
With Ansible we can follow Configuration as a Code conception and made our changes more predictable and easy to verify.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
test playbooks prior execution on using available feature
Config Management for the Rest of Us
What do you like best about the product?
Ansible is simple:
It works with Python and uses SSH on Linux + UNIX systems. Write YAML "playbooks" and run them any platform you need. We use it on CentOS, FreeBSD, and Ubuntu - but Windows works as well.
What do we use Ansible for?
To deploy configuration to many systems, to stand up web applications we use, to backup files and data, to secure services on our servers, and much more.
Modules exist for every service or application you can think of. Would you like to manage KVM with Ansible? Can do! Want to manage your ssh keys across multiple employees? No problem!
The Ansible Galaxy site has many playbooks where you can learn by example. There are also hundreds of playbooks freely available to be forked on GitHub.
It works with Python and uses SSH on Linux + UNIX systems. Write YAML "playbooks" and run them any platform you need. We use it on CentOS, FreeBSD, and Ubuntu - but Windows works as well.
What do we use Ansible for?
To deploy configuration to many systems, to stand up web applications we use, to backup files and data, to secure services on our servers, and much more.
Modules exist for every service or application you can think of. Would you like to manage KVM with Ansible? Can do! Want to manage your ssh keys across multiple employees? No problem!
The Ansible Galaxy site has many playbooks where you can learn by example. There are also hundreds of playbooks freely available to be forked on GitHub.
What do you dislike about the product?
I think there's a bit of a learning curve with Ansible as far as writing the playbooks out. There's a large gap in my mind between a simple playbook that maybe configures one service or hardens a server, and a super complex playbook that can manage applications at a large scale. It takes time and planning and most importantly TESTING. We test our playbooks a lot because one variable can make a difference between a success or a disaster.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use it to stand up new servers, setup new applications, deploy a new service to more than one machine in your fleet. Can also use it to copy config files or other important things between the 'master' (even though Ansible is designed so you don't need one).
Recommendations to others considering the product:
I would read the documentation and get completely buried in everything it can do.
Deploy machines in AWS
What do you like best about the product?
Ansible is extremelly easy to use. The project organization is clear, the AWS Dynamic Inventory works great.
What do you dislike about the product?
Only the paid version has slave tracking and allows pulling. It would be great to see ansible providing a free alternative to Puppet and Salt.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Deploy and manage a large set of machines in AWS
Can't live without it now that I use it - Use it for Orchestration of deployments and new buildouts
What do you like best about the product?
The YAML syntax is so easy that anyone can use it. No more excuses from people that they are not a coder, they can now declaratively define their infrastructure via code just by knowing YAML. It allows me to version control my infrastructure now that it is defined by code.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes the data structures available seem limiting but once you really learn the tool, it all comes into focus. The documentation can be limited for the modules but you can always read the source code as its just python and really easy to read and understand.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Reduce the lead times when provisioning new complex multi-tier stacks from Linux VM's to load balancer VIP's and SSL certification installations.
I also rely on Ansible for deployments of multi-tier application from my CI/CD server (Bamboo). Ansible is available on the Bamboo server so the deployment playbook gets version controlled alongside the app's source code and is executed by Bamboo/Ansible at deploy time. I also rely on Liquibase for DB schema evolution which is also executed by Ansible.
I also rely on Ansible for deployments of multi-tier application from my CI/CD server (Bamboo). Ansible is available on the Bamboo server so the deployment playbook gets version controlled alongside the app's source code and is executed by Bamboo/Ansible at deploy time. I also rely on Liquibase for DB schema evolution which is also executed by Ansible.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Start with the community edition and see if its enough before purchasing Ansible Tower. Remember to always version control your playbooks.
Automate orchestration, deployment, configuration and more as a code
What do you like best about the product?
Ansible helps treat Infrastructure as code. Easy to setup, Ansible does not require agents to be installed, relies on SSH. This makes it easier to be used for a variety of hosts in a dynamic environment. In case of agents, their versions and configuration also needs to be managed.
Playbooks are human readable (YAML format). They can easily be version controlled and thus ease collaboration and usage by other teams.
Although written in Python, modules can be added in many other languages.
Good community and ecosystem
Playbooks are human readable (YAML format). They can easily be version controlled and thus ease collaboration and usage by other teams.
Although written in Python, modules can be added in many other languages.
Good community and ecosystem
What do you dislike about the product?
It is slower than other options. The downside of using ssh is that you have to debug and resolve SSH issues yourself. From adding/updating keys, resolving conflicts to configuring sshd. Any errors arising from this needs to be taken care. Also you need to take care of outdated OSes with older Python versions.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Ansible is great for orchestration, deployment and managing in enterprise environments.
Playbooks
Playbooks
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Design for your environment, decide on Roles early on. Spend time to ensure Playbooks remain modular.
Easy and powerful, fast results
What do you like best about the product?
So simple and easy to use. Require no server, no infrastructure configuration. It runs on my machine and do the job remotely. Fast, power, well documented, a lot of modules included in core.
What do you dislike about the product?
There is not much that I disliked. Maybe the file structure, would be better documented and specified.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I solved problems of windows and linux machine configuration management, triggering deploys, providing cloud infrastructure. Easy to maintain and fast response.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Simple and easy. All you need to configure your machines without pre-requisites.
Best tool to seamlessly manage everything in a Data center.
What do you like best about the product?
The best thing is that its a one stop solution to all of our needs to manage an entire data center. We can manage configurations, deploy applications and it lets multiple people to work together rather than the traditional one sysadmin to manage it all, which is also possible from the Ansible command line.
The other thing is that its open source, which lets me add feature which other can use too. The community is very active too.
The other thing is that its open source, which lets me add feature which other can use too. The community is very active too.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are some features which i would like to be implemented one of which is supporting Kubernetes by Google and rkt from CoreOS but I am sure that its certainly on their roadmap and they will be adding those in the near future.
Other than that I don't think there is anything which I don't like in particular. It has really reduced overhead of managing using different tools, writing scripts and managing configurations.
Other than that I don't think there is anything which I don't like in particular. It has really reduced overhead of managing using different tools, writing scripts and managing configurations.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are managing a data center in a university which handles application deployment for research purposes.
Ansible is the only solution we need to do all of that, otherwise we had to use atleast a dozen of other softwares and it even would have been impossible. We don't need to write scripts anymore.
We are using SDN (Software Defined Networks) to automate network configurations on HP SDN enabled switches
Ansible is the only solution we need to do all of that, otherwise we had to use atleast a dozen of other softwares and it even would have been impossible. We don't need to write scripts anymore.
We are using SDN (Software Defined Networks) to automate network configurations on HP SDN enabled switches
Our entire infrastructure is based on Ansible
What do you like best about the product?
Ansible is amazing product because ot it's ease of use. A whole infrastructure can be binged times faster compared to Chef or Puppet.
What do you dislike about the product?
Compared to Chef or Puppet, Ansible has less contributed community modules.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Provisioning of new nodes is times faster Ansible.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
You can always use roles from Ansible Galaxy.
Easy provisioning
What do you like best about the product?
It is easy to get started(especially with ansible galaxy) but still powerful enough for the most complex setup.
The newer Amazon web service features made my life easier!
The newer Amazon web service features made my life easier!
What do you dislike about the product?
Larger setups can have a very large folder tree with multiple groups and roles (hardly a negative but couldn't think of anything else)
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Project environments provisioned at the click of a button.
Spawning test environments during deployment
Spawning test environments during deployment
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Really easy to get started with. Simple yml syntax and great documentation.
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