ANSIBLE CASE STUDY

What is Ansible?

Ansible is all about automation. It is a software tool that provides simple but powerful automation for cross-platform computer support. It is used for configuration management of the operating system. It is primarily intended for IT professionals, who use it for application deployment, updates on workstations and servers, cloud provisioning, configuration management, intra-service orchestration, and nearly anything a systems administrator does on a weekly or daily basis.

How do Ansible works?

Ansible works by connecting to nodes (clients, servers, or whatever you're configuring) on a network, and then sending a small program called an Ansible module to that node. Ansible works on SSH protocol if the target is Linux System and if the target is Windows System then the protocol WinRM. It is seamless. It works on Idempotent.

In Ansible, there are two types of Nodes/systems:

1. Controller Node

2. Managed Node

Controller node is that system where Ansible is installed. It manages all the configurations that are required in the managed node. There must be at least one controller node.

Managed node is also known as the target node. A managed node is any device being managed by the control node. Here the configuration takes place. There can be multiple managed nodes/target nodes.

?? NASA Ansible Case Study

To solve the problems that they had with lack of centralized management and a diverse environment, they evaluated multiple solutions and decided on the implementation of Ansible Tower. They are now leveraging Ansible Tower to manage their environment in a very organized and scheduled way. As a result of their Ansible Tower implementation they have achieved the following efficiencies:

1. NASA web app servers are being patched routinely and automatically through Ansible Tower with a very simple 10-line Ansible playbook.
2. Ansible is also being used to remediate security issues and was leveraged to re-mediate both OpenSSL issues earlier this year. This not only saved time but allowed them to quickly re-mediate a very daunting security issue.
3. Every single week both the full and mobile versions of www.nasa.gov are updated via Ansible, generally only taking about 5 minutes to do.
4. OS level user accounts for mission-critical staff are continually checked and created if missing. They can now say with absolute certainty that everyone who needs access has access, even if that means adding or removing a user almost instantly from all servers.
5. They have also integrated Ansible facts into our CMDB, CloudAware, for better management visibility of our entire AWS inventory. As a result, they are able to organize their inventory of AWS resources in a very granular way that was not possible before.
6. Ansible is also used to ensure their environment is compliant with necessary Federal security standards as outlined by FedRAMP and other regulatory requirements.

?? MICROSOFT Ansible case study

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.

"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."

Using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and working with Red Hat Consulting, Microsoft created a standardized, centralized network automation environment that reduces routine, repeatable tasks and complexity.

“Digital transformation is really changing the way that we think about how we solve problems,” said Dworak. “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.”

Trends in using the Ansible tool is increasing rapidly form the past few years. Almost all the big firms are switching to Ansible tool for automation.

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