Among the many configuration management tools available, Ansible has some distinct advantages-it's minimal in nature, you don't need to install anything on your nodes, and it has an easy learning curve. With this updated second edition, you'll learn how to be productive with this tool quickly, whether you're a developer deploying code to production or a system administrator looking for a better automation solution.

Authors Lorin Hochstein and Rene Moser show you how to write playbooks (Ansible's configuration management scripts), manage remote servers, and explore the tool's real power: built-in declarative modules. You'll discover that Ansible has the functionality you need-and the simplicity you desire.

Manage Windows machines, and automate network device configuration
Manage your fleet from your web browser with Ansible Tower
Understand how Ansible differs from other configuration management systems
Use the YAML file format to write your own playbooks
Work with a complete example to deploy a non-trivial application
Deploy applications to Amazon EC2 and other cloud platforms
Create Docker images and deploy Docker containers with Ansible
This book is best read start to finish, with later chapters building on earlier ones. Because it's written in a tutorial style, you can follow along on your own machine. Most examples focus on web applications.