

This is one way that Ansible simplifies the administration of servers. Because of this, an Ansible system does not require any additional software to be installed on the client computers. It communicates over normal SSH channels to retrieve information from remote systems, issue commands, and copy files. How Does Ansible Work?Īnsible works by configuring client machines, referred to as managed nodes, from a computer that has the Ansible components installed and configured, which is then called the Ansible control node.


In this guide, we will discuss how to install Ansible on an Ubuntu 18.04 server and go over some basics of how to use this software. Ansible is a great alternative to these options because it offers a simple architecture that doesn’t require special software to be installed on nodes, using SSH to execute the automation tasks and YAML files to define provisioning details. While there are many popular configuration management tools available for Linux systems, such as Chef and Puppet, these are often more complex than many people want or need. They allow you to control many different systems in an automated way from one central location. Configuration management systems are designed to streamline the process of controlling large numbers of servers, for administrators and operations teams.
