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Ansible is an open-source software provisioning, configuration management, and application-deployment tool enabling infrastructure as code. It runs on many Unix-like systems, and can configure both Unix-like systems as well as Microsoft Windows. It includes its own declarative language to describe system configuration.

Ansible was written by Michael DeHaan and acquired by Red Hat in 2015. Ansible is agentless, temporarily connecting remotely via SSH or Windows Remote Management (allowing remote PowerShell execution) to do its tasks.

Ansible is a radically simple IT automation system. It handles configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, ad-hoc task execution, network automation, and multi-node orchestration. Ansible makes complex changes like zero-downtime rolling updates with load balancers easy.

• Have a dead simple setup process and a minimal learning curve.
• Manage machines very quickly and in parallel.
• Avoid custom-agents and additional open ports, be agentless by leveraging the existing SSH daemon.
• Describe infrastructure in a language that is both machine and human friendly.
• Focus on security and easy auditability/review/rewriting of content.
• Manage new remote machines instantly, without bootstrapping any software.
• Allow module development in any dynamic language, not just Python.
• Be usable as non-root.
• Be the easiest IT automation system to use, ever.

GitHub: https://github.com/ansible/ansible

1. Be sure, that Python (version 3.5 or later) is installed.
2. Install Ansible for your OS by this instructions.
3. Setting up inventory by this guide.

VS Code addons:

• vscode-ansible for code completion, syntax highlighting and linting of Ansible playbooks files
• vscode-nginx for syntax highlighting of Nginx configs

VS Code config hints:

For better readability, please add two association to your .vscode/settings.json:

1. For Ansible playbooks
2. For jinja2 templates (which uses for Nginx configs)

{
  // ...
  "files.associations": {
    // ...
    "*-domain.j*2": "NGINX", // for all jinja2 files ended with `domain` word
    "*playbook.y*ml": "ansible" // for YAML files ended with `playbook` word
  }
  // ...
}

Beautify Ansible outputs:

Since Ansible v2.5.x, you can enable beautify output by callback_plugins and auto convert this one line output:

TASK [Get SSL for domain] *******************************
fatal: [***]: FAILED! => {"changed": true, "cmd": ["certbot", "--nginx", "certonly", "--agree-tos", "-m", "[email protected]", "-d", "example.com", "-d", "www.example.com", "--dry-run"], "delta": "***", "end": "***", "msg": "non-zero return code", "rc": 1, "start": "***", "stderr": "..." ...

To awesome structured, like this:

TASK [Get SSL for domain] *******************************
fatal: [***]: FAILED! => changed=true
  cmd:
  - certbot
  - --nginx
  - certonly
  - --agree-tos
  - -m
  - [email protected]
  - -d
  - example.com
  - -d
  - www.example.com
  - --dry-run
  delta: '***'
  end: '***'
  msg: non-zero return code
  rc: 1
  start: '***'
  stderr: ...
  ...

To use it, please, edit the [defaults] section in your Ansible config file (/etc/ansible/ansible.cfg):

[defaults]
stdout_callback = yaml       # Use the YAML callback plugin
bin_ansible_callbacks = True # Use the stdout_callback when running ad-hoc commands