Configuration Management

By default, before starting to execute the set of tasks defined in a playbook, Ansible will take a few moments to gather information about the systems that are being provisioned. These are known as *facts*. Ansible facts contain information such as network interfaces and addresses, the operating system running on remote nodes, available memory, among other things. Learn how to access this information from your playbooks.

With Ansible, you can use ad hoc commands to execute one instruction at a time on one or more remote servers. They are ideal to perform tasks that aren’t executed frequently, and to consult information about the remote systems that Ansible manages. In this cheatsheet guide, you’ll learn how to use ad hoc commands to manage one or more servers with Ansible, and how to perform some common tasks this way.

Ansible is a modern configuration management tool that facilitates the task of setting up and maintaining remote servers.