Ansible consists of several key components that collectively build a robust automation and configuration management. Ad-hoc commands are the easiest and fastest way to run some commands remotely or on a host. You have to understand the basic terminology to do this, so here is a quick start, and later we are going to go into the details in the upcoming articles.

Ansible can be installed on a large variety of systems, but most people and companies run it on Linux hosts. Small companies and startups (with only a few administrators) do not dedicate a server for it, rather they use the admin workstations or notebooks. When a company grows and more people work on the environment they dedicate a server to these operations, and Ansible can scale well. In this article we go through the different alternative methods to install Ansible.

The Ansible Basics course is a new, free series from Tom’s IT Cafe for those who want to learn the foundations of automation, configuration management and infrastructure as code. The structure of the course is simple, starting with the installation of Ansible, through its configuration, to some examples of the usage. You have to understand some computer basics to fully understand this topic. This article series will not go into the details of networking, identity and access management nor security hardening. It will help you start working with Ansible, and initiate your automation journey. New articles on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5PM CET.