01. Ansible Intro

Here’s what you’re going to learn in this Ansible lesson:

• Ansible overview
• Configuration management philosophy
• How to install/update software with Ansible
• What are templates and how to use them
• Managing services with Systemd
• Controlling when actions are taken conditionally
• Classification of machines for conditionals
• How to create and manage roles
• What is an inventory file
• Ansible file structure

Note:

The instructor says in the video above that we are in lesson 4, but this is now lesson 3.

Ansible Overview

• Leverages YAML (yet another modeling language) and JSON (Javascript object notation)
• Agent-less language which uses SSH (secure shell) to connect to servers
• Light-weight, but managing large clusters is slow
• Written in Python, Ruby and Powershell

Configuration Management Desired State

Idempotency: “The property of certain operations in mathematics and computer science whereby they can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the initial application.”
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idempotence