Re: Ansible recommendations?
Tom Browder writes:
> I'm considering using Ansible (from Debian packages) for maintaining
> multiple remote Debian servers. The master server will be my Debian laptop.
>
> I have three questions:
>
> 1. If you have experience with Debian ansible, are you or were you
> satisfied with the experience?
>
I've use Ansible with Debian for about 5 years. I don't have any
complaints. Managing Debian with Ansible is pretty similar to managing
just about every other Linux distribution, with a few minor tweaks
(e.g. using the 'apt' module for managing packages instead of yum/dnf).
> 2. There are many published books in print about Ansible. Can you recommend
> one for an experienced sysadmin who is an Ansible newbie?
>
The documentation is quite good. It might be all you need. For a more
narrative introduction, Jeff Geerling's "Ansible for DevOps" is pretty
good: https://leanpub.com/ansible-for-devops
> 3. If you don't recommend Ansible, can you recommend any other similar
> system?
>
I've also used SaltStack. It's also very good. Anecdotally, I've found
it to be significantly faster than Ansible. I find that Ansible can
be less free-form than SaltStack, but that's not necessarily a bad
thing (take a glance at how looping/iteration works to get a sense for
what I mean). I preferred working with SaltCloud for initial provisioning of
servers, though. Really, either one would be perfectly adequate for the
needs you describe.
> Thanks.
>
> -Tom
--
Mike Oliver
Reply to: