How an Ansible work behind the industries ?

The blog contains, how the industries are using ansible to solve different challenges.

ANSIBLE:

Ansible is a configuration management platform that automates storage, servers, and networking. When you use Ansible to configure these components, difficult manual tasks become repeatable and less vulnerable to error.

How does Ansible work ?

Ansible simplifies IT automation by capturing an array of IT resources and supporting multitier deployments from day 1. Ansible consolidates resources across multiple systems to manage them from a single platform rather than requiring management from one system at a time. Code, lifecycle, and changes can be managed through inventory, playbooks, and roles.

A configuration management system like Ansible is made up of several components. The systems that are managed can include servers, storage, networking, and software. These are the targets of the configuration management system. The goal is to maintain these systems in known, determined states. Another aspect of a configuration management system is the description of the desired state for the system. The third major aspect of a configuration management system is automation software, which is responsible for making sure that the target systems and software are maintained in the desired state.

Ansible works by connecting to our nodes and pushing out small programs, called “Ansible modules” to them. These programs are written to be resource models of the desired state of the system. Ansible then executes these modules (over SSH by default), and removes them when finished.

Some important terms in ansible :

Control Node

Any machine with Ansible installed. 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.

Inventory

A list of managed nodes. An inventory file is also sometimes called a “host-file”. Your inventory can specify information like IP address for each managed node. An inventory can also organize managed nodes, creating and nesting groups for easier scaling.

Collections

Collections are a distribution format for Ansible content that can include playbooks, roles, modules, and plugins. You can install and use collections through Ansible Galaxy.

Modules

The units of code Ansible executes. Each module has a particular use, from administering users on a specific type of database to managing VLAN interfaces on a specific type of network device. You can invoke a single module with a task, or invoke several different modules in a playbook. Starting in Ansible 2.10, modules are grouped in collections.

Tasks

The units of action in Ansible. You can execute a single task once with an ad-hoc command.

Playbook

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.

Ansible has huge no.s of benefits

• No Agent : As long as the box can be ssh’d into and it has python, it can be configured with Ansible.
• Idempotent : Ansible’s whole architecture is structured around the concept of idempotency. The core idea here is that you only do things if they are needed and that things are repeatable without side effects. More than anything else this sold me over Puppet and Chef.
• Declarative Not Procedural : Other configuration tools tend to be procedural — do this and then do that and so on. Ansible works by you writing a description of the state of the machine that you want and then it takes steps to fulfill that description.
• Tiny Learning Curve : Roughly a week after starting to use Ansible, I was giving presentations on how to use it to a local Meetup. I’d contrast that heavily with Puppet and Chef which despite years of Ruby programming, I never felt comfortable enough to present to anyone.

* NEC :

How the NEC use Ansible behind the scene

NEC telecom industry use networking integration for environment provisioning for business issues.NEC Corporation of America (NEC) is a leading technology integrator providing solutions that improve the way people work and communicate.

BUSINESS CHALLENGES FACED BY NEC

Recent customer trends towards cloud-based services have forced NEC to quickly move to a hosted unified communications (UC) offer. Challenges around provisioning new clients create excess manual work and human input errors. NEC required a solution to increase the speed to market for new hosted UC customers, while utilizing the current team resources and reducing manual errors.

SOLUTION BY USING ANSIBLE MADE A DIFFERENCE

It has a cloud network for its hosted voice solution and as new customers were being on-boarded, network engineers would enter numerous CLI commands to get them added to their SDN fabric. To speed up this process and reduce manual processes, NEC migrated to using Ansible Tower and new Ansible modules specific to the NEC SDN solution. In this solution, the NEC Programmable Flow Rest API interfaces with Tower to build new customer virtual networks. NEC created Ansible modules for the standard constructs used in building new customer networks. NEC then mapped the new customer CLI scripts into Ansible playbooks. Ansible Tower features such as Surveys were used to create a self service IT experience for the network engineering team.

RESULTS NEC FIND BY USING ANSIBLE

Using Ansible and Ansible Tower to automate network builds, the NEC network engineering team is able to speed time to market, reduce errors, and add new auditing functionality. Ansible solution benefits: • Faster time to market for new SaaS customers, resulting in increased revenue • A predictable deployment process, creating deterministic outcomes and reducing errors from manual work • Ansible Tower functionality created self service IT, offering a better utilization of team resources • New functionality to manage the state of configuration, allowing for consistent changes to configuration.

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