What Is Ansible?
Ansible is a popular IT automation engine that automates tasks that are either cumbersome or repetitive or complex like configuration management, cloud provisioning, software deployment, and intra-service orchestration.
Ansible is used for the multi-tier deployments and it models all of IT infrastructure into one deployment instead of handling each one separately. There are no agents and no custom security architecture is required to be used in the Ansible architecture. The deployment is simple plain English like language that is used in Ansible called YAML which stands for “YAML Ain’t Markup Language.”
To work with Ansible is very easy; it pushes out small programs called “Ansible Modules” to your nodes to connect. It can deploy and connect using the SSH agent to execute the modules and then removes it when finished. There are no servers, daemons or databases required these modules can reside anywhere in the machines. You need to work with any text editor or terminal programs and along with a version control system to manage the changes in the content. Ansible has over 750 modules built into it.
In Ansible the passwords are supported, However, you can use SSH keys with the ssh-agents as one of the methods to work with Ansible. You can create any user account and the root user is required. To configure what machines can access which hosts there is a module called "authorized_key".
You can add machines to the Ansible in a simple text format and manage your inventory. It can use the inventory and variable information from other sources such as Rackspace, EC2, and Openstack, etc.
If you need to write your code then also you can use Ansible in languages such as Python, Ruby, and Bash, etc which return JSON. You can write your modules, API, and Plugins.
Playbooks are the simple and powerful automation language used to orchestrate multiple infrastructures in one goes. This can be done in Ansible.
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Ansible for DevOps
Ansible is an open-source, cross-platform resource provisioning tool. Furthermore, it aids in the integration of internally developed applications into your programmes, making the DevOps process easier. It is one of the most used DevOps Tools for orchestrating, automating, configuring, and managing IT infrastructure. The tool makes deployment significantly faster, which increases team productivity. and also know about the Devsecops Vs DevOps.
Ansible is the most preferred DevOps tool for orchestration, automation, configuration, and managing the IT Infrastructure. The benefits of Ansible in DevOps is to respond and scale in pace with the demand. The following are the benefits of Ansible in DevOps:
- The feedback loop is accelerated at a faster rate
- The bugs are found sooner and not wait till the end
- Risk due to lack of sufficient knowledge is mitigated
- The deployments are reliable
- The IT infrastructure is coordinated
- The deployments are faster
- Need for automation
- Version control and configuration management
- Orchestration of the IT Infrastructure.
Also Read: Devops VS CI CD
Benefits Of Ansible
As one of the top DevOps tools, Ansible offers many advantages for users. Let us explore more:
- Free of cost: It is a cost-effective choice for DevOps teams with limited resources because it is free. This means that it can be utilised effectively by businesses of any size.
- Simple to set up: Ansible's user interface is extremely simple, requiring no complicated processes or difficult configurations. It is user-friendly, making it easier for DevOps teams to swiftly put it up. It also offers extensive documentation, which makes it much easier for teams to grasp the implementation and automate procedures.
- Powerful tool: It is a powerful DevOps tool used to maintain the complex DevOps processes. It comes with built-in modules which help in maintaining various aspects of IT infrastructure. It is capable of maintaining large infrastructures with dynamic inventory which makes it an ideal tool for both small and large-scale organizations.
- Flexible: The tool makes it much easier to adapt to different environments. It can work with different operating systems including Linux, Windows and Unix. moreover, it supports multiple transport methods. It is also integrated with other DevOps tools and DevOps application as well.
- Agentless: This tool does not require any additional software or agents to be installed in order to use this tool. This makes the installation and maintenance of the tool much easier.
Also Read: DevOps Change Management
Ansible Features
The tool is versatile with many features used to make the DevOps processes simpler and faster. Let us explore more:
- Configuration management: It is one of the major features of the Ansible tool which helps in the management of IT infrastructure. With the configuration management, the DevOps teams can automate the deployment, reduce the risks of unintended changes, audit, track changes and provide better visibility.
- Application Deployment: It is one of the prominent features of Ansible. With the pre-packaged modules, the deployment becomes much easier. It helps in streamlining and deploying applications.
- Orchestration: Ansible allows the management of orchestrated workflows using its declarative language, helping to simplify complex processes. You can automate processes such as rolling updates, system configuration changes and application deployments.
- Security and Compliance: Ansible offers multiple in-built security options which help in securing communication protocols, encryption and authentication methods.
- Cloud provisioning: It facilitates the provisioning of cloud resources such as virtual computers, storage, and networking components. It also supports a variety of cloud providers such as AWS, Google, Azure, and many more.
Also Read: DevOps Automation
Why Ansible?
Ansible is very useful and you would appreciate it with the example when there are 4 or 5 web servers to be configured and deployed, and when there are more than 4 database servers to be configured and deployed. There are applications in the web servers and it connects the database servers at the backend. Now the traditional situation demands that you separately configure these servers and manage them.
Also Read: Python For DevOps
However, these servers will have various application updates. Even a system admin cannot handle if there are more servers and their configurations will not be identical. These tasks are complex to do and to manage the number of servers without putting a lot of effort into system admin as well as by developers who are developing the applications. Just imagine other servers which the organization has such as DNS, NTP, AD, Email, etc
This is where Ansible comes into the picture. Infrastructure automation and orchestrations can be done by Ansible. All the similar servers can be handled and managed in one go by Ansible.
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Uses of Ansible
The use cases of Ansible are listed below
- Infrastructure Provisioning
- Configuration Management
- IT automation
- Continuous deployment
- Application Development
- Network Automation
- Security Automation
- Infrastructure Orchestration
Key Roles of Ansible in DevOps
Configuration Management – Ansible provides a declarative language that lets DevOps teams define the desired configuration and state for systems, applications, and services, automating deployment and management of configurations across multiple hosts to ensure consistency. Its idempotent nature means configurations are applied only when necessary, reducing the risk of unintended changes, while also supporting versioning and auditing for better visibility into infrastructure state.
Application Deployment – Ansible offers a wide range of modules for managing application deployment, including pre-packaged modules for popular applications as well as the flexibility to build custom modules for unique requirements, enabling consistent rollout of applications across multiple servers.
Infrastructure Provisioning – Ansible creates infrastructure on cloud or on-premises platforms from scratch, setting the stage for further configuration and deployment, whether the target is physical hardware, virtual machines, or cloud environments.
Orchestration – Ansible coordinates tasks across distributed systems, ensuring services start, stop, or reconfigure in a defined order, which matters for multi-tier applications where different components depend on each other being ready at the right time.
Continuous Delivery / CI-CD Integration – Ansible automates deployments across development, staging, and production environments through zero-touch processes, streamlining the pipeline for faster, more reliable software delivery.
Security and Compliance Automation – Ansible also plays a role in enforcing security policies automatically and ensuring systems comply with required standards, reducing the manual overhead of auditing configurations across large environments.
Container and Cloud-Native Support – Ansible manages both containers and traditional infrastructure using the same playbooks and roles, keeping containerized services configured consistently across environments, and while it isn't an orchestrator itself, it can help manage platforms like Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and OpenShift.
Centralized Management via Ansible Tower – Ansible Tower provides a web-based inventory management interface for easily managing hosts and groups, along with a REST API for integrating Ansible into the broader DevOps toolchain.
Managing Docker Containers Using Ansible Modules
Managing Docker containers with Ansible means letting Ansible handle container lifecycle tasks — creating, starting, stopping, restarting, removing, and configuring containers — automatically, instead of running Docker commands by hand on each server.
1. Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure you have:
Ansible installed on the control machine
Docker installed on the target server
The Docker daemon actively running
Ansible able to connect to the target server (typically via SSH)
The Docker-specific Ansible collection installed:
ansible-galaxy collection install community.docker
2. Creating and Starting a Container
Here's a sample playbook that spins up an Nginx container:
yaml
---
- name: Manage Docker Container
hosts: docker_servers
become: true
tasks:
- name: Start Nginx container
community.docker.docker_container:
name: nginx_server
image: nginx:latest
state: started
ports:
- "8080:80"
Running this playbook will pull the Nginx image if it's not already present, create a container named nginx_server, start it, and map port 8080 on the host to port 80 inside the container.
3. Stopping a Container
yaml
- name: Stop Nginx container
community.docker.docker_container:
name: nginx_server
state: stopped
4. Restarting a Container
yaml
- name: Restart Nginx container
community.docker.docker_container:
name: nginx_server
state: started
restart: true
5. Removing a Container
yaml
- name: Remove Nginx container
community.docker.docker_container:
name: nginx_server
state: absent
6. Passing Environment Variables to a Container
You can inject environment variables directly when launching a container — useful for setting things like database credentials:
yaml
- name: Run MySQL container
community.docker.docker_container:
name: mysql_db
image: mysql:8.0
state: started
env:
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: "password123"
MYSQL_DATABASE: "myapp"
ports:
- "3306:3306"
7. Handling Docker Images
Beyond containers, Ansible can also pull down Docker images ahead of time:
yaml
- name: Pull Docker image
community.docker.docker_image:
name: nginx
tag: latest
source: pull
8. Running Commands Inside a Running Container
To execute a command inside an already-running container, use the docker_container_exec module:
yaml
- name: Execute command inside container
community.docker.docker_container_exec:
container: nginx_server
command: nginx -t
Together, these modules let a single playbook manage the full container lifecycle — pulling images, starting and configuring containers, injecting environment variables, and even running commands inside them — all without ever touching the Docker CLI directly.
What Ansible Can Do?
- Configuration Management - The enterprise hardware and software information is recorded and updated in detail, thus maintaining the consistency of the product performance.
- Application Deployment - The applications can be managed in Ansible from Development to Production when you define and manage the applications using Ansible.
- Orchestration - To manage as a whole and how the configurations interact.
- Security and Compliance - Wide security policy can be deployed across the infrastructure when the policy is defined in Ansible
- Provisioning - Helps to automate and manage the process
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How to Use Ansible With Docker?
To use Ansible with Docker, install the community.docker collection, define your target hosts in an inventory file, and write playbooks using Docker-specific modules to manage images, containers, networks, and volumes.
Step 1: Install Docker on Target Hosts (If Needed)
Before automating containers, Ansible can also install Docker itself using standard package modules like apt or yum, ensuring the Docker daemon is present on each target machine.
Step 2: Install the Ansible Docker Collection
Run this on your control node:
ansible-galaxy collection install community.docker
Verify it installed correctly:
ansible-galaxy collection list | grep docker
Step 3: Define Your Inventory
List the hosts running Docker in an inventory file:
ini
[docker_hosts]
docker1 ansible_host=192.168.1.10
docker2 ansible_host=192.168.1.11
[docker_hosts:vars]
ansible_user=ubuntu
ansible_ssh_private_key_file=~/.ssh/id_rsa
Step 4: Write a Playbook Using Docker Modules
yaml
- name: Deploy Nginx Container with Ansible
hosts: docker_hosts
become: true
tasks:
- name: Pull the Nginx image
community.docker.docker_image:
name: nginx
source: pull
- name: Run Nginx container
community.docker.docker_container:
name: my_nginx
image: nginx
ports:
- "8080:80"
state: started
Step 5: Run the Playbook
ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini deploy_nginx.yml
This pulls the specified image and starts the container, exposing it on the defined port.
Step 6: Manage Container State
Change the state parameter to control the container's lifecycle:
started – runs the container
stopped – stops it without deleting
restarted – forces a restart
absent – removes the container entirely
Step 7: Scale Across Multiple Hosts
Because Ansible playbooks run against every host in the inventory group, the same playbook can deploy and manage containers consistently across dozens of servers at once — no manual repetition required.
How Ansible Works
Ansible works through an agentless, push-based architecture — a control node connects to managed nodes over SSH (or WinRM for Windows), pushes out small programs called modules, executes them, and then removes them once the task is complete.
Control Node
The control node is the machine where Ansible is installed and from which all commands and playbooks are run. Ansible must be installed on at least one control node, though a backup control node can also exist. This is the only place Ansible software needs to live — it does all the "thinking" and orchestrates everything else.
Managed Nodes
Managed nodes are the remote servers or devices that Ansible controls, and no Ansible installation is required on them. Instead, the control node connects to them using standard protocols like SSH for Linux systems or WinRM for Windows systems, keeping the overall system lightweight.
Modules
Ansible runs temporary scripts called modules to achieve the desired state on managed nodes. Ansible executes these modules — which act as resource models of the desired system state — over SSH by default, and removes them once the task finishes. These modules are designed to be idempotent when possible, so they only make changes to a system when necessary.
Inventory
The inventory lists managed nodes and their connection details, allowing simple, push-based configuration management without requiring any client-side daemons or special software.
Playbooks
Ansible uses human-readable YAML templates called playbooks, containing instructions that provide a blueprint of automation tasks, allowing repetitive work to happen automatically without needing an advanced programming language.
Why Ansible Is Used in DevOps
Automation – Ansible removes the need for manual server configuration and deployment work, letting teams automate repetitive setup and provisioning tasks instead of handling them by hand each time.
Agentless – There's no software or agent to install on the servers being managed. Ansible simply connects using SSH for Linux systems or WinRM for Windows systems, which keeps the whole setup lightweight and easy to maintain.
Simple – Automation instructions are written as Playbooks — easy-to-read YAML files that describe what needs to happen, without requiring deep programming knowledge to get started.
Idempotent – Running the same playbook again and again produces the same end result every time, without introducing unintended or duplicate changes to the system.
Scalable – A single control node can manage hundreds or even thousands of servers at once, making Ansible practical for both small setups and large enterprise infrastructure.
Ansible Architecture
The Ansible architecture is shown below in the diagram.
Let’s discuss what are the components that make an Ansible architecture.
Modules: These are the small programs that Ansible pushes from a controlled machine to all the nodes or remote hosts. They are executed with the help of playbooks and help in controlling things like services, packages and files.
Plugins: Plugins are the extra pieces of code that are used to execute more functions in Ansible. The tool already comes with multiple plugins but you can always add yours in the system.
Inventories: The control machines and nodes you are using for Ansible can be stored in these inventories. They can be stored in a simple text file consisting of IP addresses, databases, servers and so on.
Playbooks: These playbooks for Ansible act as manuals which tell how a task can be performed easily. This makes tasks easier without users knowing or remembering any definite syntax.
APIs: With the help of these APIs, you can extend Ansible’s connection types, callbacks and many other things.
Also Read: Artifacts in DevOps
What next?
Ansible is mainly used as a DevOps tool and can perform a lot of tasks that otherwise are time-consuming, complex, repetitive, and can make a lot of errors or issues. To learn Ansible we suggest that you go for online training with StarAgile. At StarAgile you can find a lot of technical training and you can choose DevOps course where you can learn about the Ansible tool. and also learn about the terraform in DevOps
Ansible is a tool that used in DevOps best Practices it is a most important tool for DevOps, Do you want to know that what are the Questions asked by Interviewer in Ansible Interview Questions
FAQs
What is Ansible used for in DevOps?
Ansible is used to automate configuration management, application deployment, and repetitive IT tasks across servers. It handles things like ensuring systems are set up consistently, installing and updating software, and coordinating actions across many machines at once — all without needing to install any agent on the target systems.
Is Ansible used for CI or CD?
Ansible isn't a CI/CD tool itself, but it integrates well into CI/CD pipelines — automating the deployment step once code has been built and tested. It's commonly used alongside tools like Jenkins or GitHub Actions, handling the "last mile" of pushing applications to servers and configuring environments consistently.
What is Kubernetes vs. Ansible?
Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that manages running containerized applications — handling scaling, networking, and self-healing for containers. Ansible, by contrast, is a configuration management and automation tool used for setting up servers, installing software, and deploying applications. They're often used together: Ansible can configure the underlying servers or nodes, while Kubernetes manages the containers running on top of them.
What is Ansible mainly used for?
Ansible is mainly used for configuration management, application deployment, and task automation — ensuring systems are consistently configured, software is installed without manual steps, and repetitive administrative jobs run automatically across many machines.
Which language is used in Ansible?
Ansible playbooks are written in YAML, a human-readable data-serialization format. Ansible itself is built using Python, and modules that run on managed nodes are also written in Python.
Is Ansible better than Terraform?
Neither is strictly "better" — they solve different problems. Terraform is an infrastructure provisioning tool, ideal for setting up cloud resources and tracking their state over time using its own declarative language (HCL). Ansible is better suited for configuration management — setting up software and maintaining systems after they exist, using YAML playbooks. Many teams use both together: Terraform provisions the infrastructure, and Ansible configures it afterward.
