What Is Ansible

Part of the Ansible course

Welcome. If you have never automated a server in your life, you are in the right place. Before we run anything, we are going to get a clear picture of what Ansible actually is, why people reach for it instead of a pile of shell scripts, and the few words you will see over and over (control node, managed node, idempotent). We are not in a rush, and this lesson does not need a workspace.

If you have ever used a shell script to set up a server, you know the problem. The script works the first time on a clean machine. The second time, half the steps fail because the user already exists, the package is already installed, or the file is already there. You end up wrapping every line in if checks, and the script grows into something nobody wants to maintain. ...