⭐ ANSIBLE..⭐
“Digital transformation is really changing the way that we think about how we solve problems. In the past, we had to manually do the same deployment again and again. With Ansible, we can create blueprints to deploy it multiple times. And every time we deploy, it’s exactly the same.” — Software engineer at Microsoft..
🔰 What is Ansible?
📃 Ansible is a configuration management system written in Python using a declarative markup language to describe configurations. It is used to automate software configuration and deployment.
🔰 Ansible Architecture :
♦️ Ansible Playbooks :
Ordered lists of tasks, saved so you can run those tasks in that order repeatedly. Playbooks can include variables as well as tasks. Playbooks are written in YAML and are easy to read, write, share and understand.
♦️ Inventory :
A list of managed nodes. An inventory file is also sometimes called a “hostfile”. Your inventory can specify information like IP address for each managed node. An inventory can also organize managed nodes.
♦️ Control Node:
Any machine with Ansible installed is known as controller node. You can run Ansible commands and playbooks by invoking the ansible or ansible-playbook command from any control node. You can use any computer that has a Python installation as a control node - laptops, shared desktops, and servers can all run Ansible. However, you cannot use a Windows machine as a control node. You can have multiple control nodes.
♦️ Managed Node:
The network devices (and/or servers) you manage with Ansible. Managed nodes are also sometimes called “hosts”. Ansible is not installed on managed nodes.
🔰 Microsoft To Detail Internal Use of Red Hat Ansible Automation 🔰🤩
“Digital transformation at Microsoft is about how we’re reinventing our operations and radically improving customer experience by eliminating manual work,” said Ryan Mecca, Principal Software Engineering Group Manager, Engineering Platforms and Data Insights, at Microsoft.👉🏻 When it comes to software and services, Microsoft has always tried to offer it all, or at least as much of it as possible.
That always makes it interesting when the company acknowledges the use of a major third-party product for internal purposes in its Fortune 100-class operations.
Microsoft will be pulling back the curtain later this month on how it uses Red Hat Ansible Automation. Launched in 2013, Red Hat Ansible Automation is a tool for automation across the stack from infrastructure to networks to cloud to security for both IT operations and development.
Microsoft will be one of several Red Hat customers speaking at AnsibleFest Atlanta from Sept. 24 to 26. Other customers talking about their Ansible adoption at the show include Datacom, Energy Market Company and Surescripts.
“Adopting Red Hat Ansible Automation has not only changed how our networks are managed, but also sparked a cultural transformation within our organization,” said Bart Dworak, Microsoft’s software engineering manager for Network Infrastructure and Operations, in a statement. “By putting automation at the forefront of our strategy and not as an afterthought, we’ve been able to scale it in ways we did not know possible. Our engineers are now constantly looking for creative ways to solve their problems using Ansible Playbooks.”
Microsoft turned to Ansible to improve the productivity of hundreds of engineers across 600 locations worldwide. Those engineers use Ansible for designing, building and deploying IT networks at scale, and the use of Ansible Automation has saved an estimated 3,000 work hours per year and reduced downtime.
For Microsoft, the Ansible deployment has a dogfooding element and AnsibleFest Atlanta will be an opportunity to drum up more partnership business with joint Red Hat-Microsoft customers. Microsoft Deployment of Red Hat Ansible Automation was done on top of Microsoft Azure.
🔰 Windows, Linux, Services, Networks AND MORE 🔰
Azure hosts a lot more than just Windows, and thankfully Ansible automates it all. Ansible has been designed for cloud deployments from the beginning, and Ansible easily allows you to provision a variety of Azure cloud services. Whether you’re building a simple 3-tier application, or a complicated set of virtual private clouds, services, and applications, your Azure environments can be described in Ansible Playbooks, and then scaled out across regions.
👉🏻 Ansible has modules for many different Azure capabilities, including:
- Virtual Machines
- Virtual Networks
- Storage and Storage Accounts
- Resource Groups
- Security Groups
- Resource Manager Templated Deployments
Ansible also has hundreds and hundreds of additional modules that help you manage every aspect of your Linux, Windows, UNIX, network infrastructure, and applications — regardless of where they’re deployed.
🔰 Automating in Azure at Scale 🔰
As your Azure footprint and supporting teams grow, you will realize the need for controls to restrict users’ ability to modify certain environments. The answer is simple: RedHat Ansible Tower gives you an enterprise framework for controlling, securing and managing Ansible automation with a UI and RESTful API.
Ansible Tower helps teams who use Ansible with an extensive set of role-based access controls that ensures users will only have access to the Azure resources (networks, systems, security groups, etc.) that are required for their job. Plus, Ansible Tower encrypts credentials such as Azure and SSH keys so that you can delegate simple automation jobs to junior employees without giving out the (literal) keys to the kingdom.
