Sachin Chaurasiya
Search articles, labs, tools…

Deploy · Configuration management

Ansible

Ansible applies idempotent playbooks to hosts over SSH without agents. It is the usual tool for OS hardening, package baselines and operational runbooks on VMs and bare metal.

Stage
Deploy
Category
Configuration management
Website
www.ansible.com
Documentation
Official docs
Source
ansible/ansible
License
GPL-3.0
On this page

What it does

Runs YAML playbooks against inventories, using modules that are idempotent by design. Roles and collections package reusable automation.

Where it fits

Deploy for host configuration and Protect for baseline hardening (CIS-style roles).

Quick start

ansible-inventory -i inventory/prod.yml --graph
ansible-playbook -i inventory/prod.yml site.yml --check --diff
ansible-vault encrypt group_vars/prod/secrets.yml

Common pitfalls

  • --check mode is not fully reliable for every module; validate on staging.
  • Vault passwords in CI must be masked variables, never files in the repo.
  • Shell/command modules break idempotency; prefer native modules.