Ansible is an IT automation tool, maintained by Red Hat, that configures systems, deploys software and orchestrates multi-step workflows. It’s agentless: Ansible connects to managed machines over SSH or WinRM and runs tasks described in YAML files called Playbooks, so nothing needs to be installed on the targets.
Ansible is used for configuration management, application deployment, patching, cloud provisioning, network automation and security compliance. It’s especially common for Day 2 operations across large Linux, Windows and network estates.
A control node reads an inventory of hosts and a Playbook of tasks. Each task calls a module, such as ansible.builtin.copy or ansible.builtin.dnf, which Ansible pushes to the host, runs and removes. Modules are designed to be idempotent, so running a Playbook twice gives the same result.
The Ansible community package and ansible-core are free and open source. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) is the paid, supported enterprise product.
Steampunk Spotter governs Ansible Playbooks before they run, checking deprecations, CVEs, module and Collection compatibility and policy violations. XLAB Steampunk has been a Red Hat Certified Partner since 2016.
