In large enterprises, there are hundreds of virtual servers typically, and managing them efficiently is impossible without proper automation. With Red Hat Ansible, the entire IT operations can be automated, regardless of whether you use Linux or Windows. Ansible can be extended with thousands of downloadable modules, enabling the management and configuration of virtually any device or operating system — including cloud environments.

Ansible Playbooks are used program repetitive configuration and operational tasks. For example, with a single Playbook we can perform all steps of an application deployment: creating and provisioning a VM, configuring a network switch or firewall, allocating storage, and installing and configuring the application.

What is Ansible used for? (Typical use cases)

Server configuration:

• Installing packages
• Setting up configuration files
• Starting/restarting services

Application deployment and updates:

• g. web servers (NGINX/Apache), databases (PostgreSQL), Java, Docker, etc.

Orchestration / process automation:

• Automating multi-step deployment workflows
• Managing multiple environments consistently (dev/test/prod)

Managing cloud or on-prem infrastructure:

• Virtual machines, networks, security settings
• Creating resources in AWS / Azure / GCP