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None as a fulltime sysadmin, most of my experience has been in operations, and in configuring servers for my own projects. I've used Puppet and Chef before, ha

None as a fulltime sysadmin, most of my experience has been in operations, and in configuring servers for my own projects. I've used Puppet and Chef before, haven't checked out Ansible. My main dissatisfaction with those tools was that there wasn't a super easy way to get started on a new VPS. I had to configure roles and settings to install Puppet or Chef, and _then_ I could get started automating things. It's certainly not hard, but I've never been in a position where it was something I did full time so have really valued platforms that do a lot of this for me.

donw 12y ago
That's why I picked Ansible. The only dependency is SSH, and you can write modules in whatever language you choose. Plus -- and this is a big win -- Ansible actually has usable documentation and practical examples, which coupled with a really clean design, make it way easier to get developers up to speed on the operations half of things.
- frik 12y ago
  Can you recommend tutorials, examples for Ansible? Is Ruby knowledge required to efficiently use Ansible? I would like to automate the installation of nginx, php, nodejs, mysql, etc. incl. modify a few config files.
  - donw 12y ago
    Ansible is written in Python, so no you don't need Ruby knowledge, and I've found the documentation -- especially the tutorials -- to be very helpful: http://docs.ansible.com/intro.html http://docs.ansible.com/intro.html
  - willthames 12y ago
    Ansible is mostly configuration based - Ansible itself is written in python but all you'll typically need to write for most usages is configuration in YAML. So no ruby at all. There are likely existing roles for most things at http://galaxy.ansible.com/ http://galaxy.ansible.com/ The Ansible docs at http://docs.ansible.com/ http://docs.ansible.com/ are pretty good, and there are lots of getting started guides most weeks on the Ansible weekly mailing list (https://devopsu.com/newsletters/ansible-weekly-newsletter.html https://devopsu.com/newsletters/ansible-weekly-newsletter.ht...) And there are a few pages on my github blog on a few fundamental principles of modelling configuration e.g. http://willthames.github.io/2014/03/17/ansible-layered-configuration-for-aws.html http://willthames.github.io/2014/03/17/ansible-layered-confi... http://willthames.github.io/2014/04/02/modelling-credentials-configuration-in-ansible.html http://willthames.github.io/2014/04/02/modelling-credentials... to give a bit of flavour of how to manage more complicated setups. Installing things is easy, getting the configuration right for your needs is the tricky bit!

donw 12y ago

That's why I picked Ansible. The only dependency is SSH, and you can write modules in whatever language you choose. Plus -- and this is a big win -- Ansible actually has usable documentation and practical examples, which coupled with a really clean design, make it way easier to get developers up to speed on the operations half of things.

frik 12y ago
Can you recommend tutorials, examples for Ansible? Is Ruby knowledge required to efficiently use Ansible? I would like to automate the installation of nginx, php, nodejs, mysql, etc. incl. modify a few config files.
- donw 12y ago
  Ansible is written in Python, so no you don't need Ruby knowledge, and I've found the documentation -- especially the tutorials -- to be very helpful: http://docs.ansible.com/intro.html http://docs.ansible.com/intro.html
- willthames 12y ago
  Ansible is mostly configuration based - Ansible itself is written in python but all you'll typically need to write for most usages is configuration in YAML. So no ruby at all. There are likely existing roles for most things at http://galaxy.ansible.com/ http://galaxy.ansible.com/ The Ansible docs at http://docs.ansible.com/ http://docs.ansible.com/ are pretty good, and there are lots of getting started guides most weeks on the Ansible weekly mailing list (https://devopsu.com/newsletters/ansible-weekly-newsletter.html https://devopsu.com/newsletters/ansible-weekly-newsletter.ht...) And there are a few pages on my github blog on a few fundamental principles of modelling configuration e.g. http://willthames.github.io/2014/03/17/ansible-layered-configuration-for-aws.html http://willthames.github.io/2014/03/17/ansible-layered-confi... http://willthames.github.io/2014/04/02/modelling-credentials-configuration-in-ansible.html http://willthames.github.io/2014/04/02/modelling-credentials... to give a bit of flavour of how to manage more complicated setups. Installing things is easy, getting the configuration right for your needs is the tricky bit!