Ansible is a newish CM instrument and orchestration engine developed and launched in 2012 by its eponymous firm (beforehand known as AnsibleWorks). Not like a number of different CM apps, Ansible doesn’t make the most of a master-and-minions setup – that is the principle distinction between it and the opposite huge boys within the CM area Puppet, Chef, CFEngine and Salt.
Ansible Tower is a web-based interface for managing Ansible. One of many high gadgets in Ansible customers’ wishlists was an easy-to-use UI for managing fast deployments and monitoring one’s configurations. Ansible administration got here up with Ansible Tower in response.
About Ansible
Ansible was initially developed in 2012 due to the perceived inadequacies of the main CM instruments, primarily Chef and Puppet. These had been:
Dependence on Ruby: Because it’s extra widespread to have Python libraries put in as default on Linux distros, Ansible’s creators determined to develop it in Python. However they took it even additional – Ansible modules work over JSON and might due to this fact be written in any programming language. So no requirement to be taught Ruby in any respect.Overhead attributable to brokers: Ansible is nearly distinctive amongst CM instruments in utilizing an agentless structure. As a substitute it solely depends on the tried and examined SSH to idempotently deploy modules to all nodes.From Wikipedia:Modules are briefly saved within the nodes and talk with the controlling machine by a JSON protocol over the usual output. When Ansible isn’t managing nodes, it doesn’t eat sources as a result of no daemons or packages are executing for Ansible within the background.Nevertheless, the sunshine weight afforded by an agentless setup additionally signifies that Ansible isn’t as versatile or highly effective as agent-based CM’s.Tough to be taught: Puppet and Chef use Ruby-derived languages to create instructions and modules utilizing their CLI’s. Alternatively Ansible modules and packages, known as playbooks, are comparatively straightforward to be taught; they use a less complicated YAML-derived syntax.
Ansible is at the moment out there for Linux/Unix-like working programs and Home windows. It’s an open-source product distributed beneath the GNU GPL.
About Ansible Tower
One of many main gripes from Ansible customers is that it didn’t have a correct GUI. And that’s placing it mildly–the GUI was so unhealthy that within the early days it wasn’t even correctly synced to the CLI, that means that the CLI and GUI may offer you 2 completely different question outcomes concerning the state of a sure node. This was an particularly vital concern as a result of good UI is essential for infrequent and new customers to get snug and conversant in an software, earlier than diving into the complexities of the CLI and playbook creation. Ansible itself was (and nonetheless is) relatively new, so most of its customers had been by definition new customers.
Ansible Tower, beforehand known as the AWX venture, is the repair to this drawback. It’s a complete web-based UI for Ansible, containing a very powerful Ansible options, particularly those who render higher as graphical relatively than text-based output, corresponding to real-time node monitoring.
From Ansible:
Ansible Tower is the easy-to-use UI and dashboard and REST API for Ansible. Centralize your Ansible infrastructure from a contemporary UI, that includes role-based entry management, job scheduling, and graphical stock administration. Tower’s REST API and CLI make it straightforward to embed Tower into present instruments and processes. Tower now contains real-time output of playbook runs, an all-new dashboard and expanded out-of-the-box cloud help.
A few of the essential options of Ansible Tower are listed beneath. The total characteristic record is accessible off the Ansible web site.
Position-based entry management: you may arrange groups and customers in numerous roles. These can combine along with your present LDAP or AD surroundings.Job scheduling: schedule your jobs and set repetition optionsPortal mode: this can be a simplified view of automation jobs for newbies and fewer skilled Ansible customers. This is a superb characteristic because it really lowers the entry obstacles to beginning to use Ansible.Totally documented REST API: lets you combine Asible into your present toolset and environmentTower Dashboard: use this to shortly view a abstract of your whole surroundings. Simplifies issues for sysadmins whereas sipping their espresso.Cloud integration: Tower is appropriate with the foremost cloud environments: Amazon EC2, Rackspace, Azure.
In brief, Ansible Tower is a remarkably helpful add-on to Ansible, in a position to do a lot of what could be achieved on the CLI. It can complement, not change, the principle software by automating and presenting a number of the major duties graphically – particularly the monitoring-dashboard forms of duties. As a significant bonus, it additionally drastically helps to cut back the intimidation issue for these new to Ansible by presenting a a lot simpler to grasp visible instrument. However for playbook creation, Ansible’s CLI continues to be the best choice.
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