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Documentation

# Ansible Documentation

## About Ansible

Ansible is an IT automation tool. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates.

Ansible’s main goals are simplicity and ease-of-use. It also has a strong focus on security and reliability, featuring a minimum of moving parts, usage of OpenSSH for transport (with other transports and pull modes as alternatives), and a language that is designed around auditability by humans–even those not familiar with the program.

We believe simplicity is relevant to all sizes of environments, so we design for busy users of all types: developers, sysadmins, release engineers, IT managers, and everyone in between. Ansible is appropriate for managing all environments, from small setups with a handful of instances to enterprise environments with many thousands of instances.

You can learn more at AnsibleFest, the annual event for all Ansible contributors, users, and customers hosted by Red Hat. AnsibleFest is the place to connect with others, learn new skills, and find a new friend to automate with.

Ansible manages machines in an agent-less manner. There is never a question of how to upgrade remote daemons or the problem of not being able to manage systems because daemons are uninstalled. Because OpenSSH is one of the most peer-reviewed open source components, security exposure is greatly reduced. Ansible is decentralized–it relies on your existing OS credentials to control access to remote machines. If needed, Ansible can easily connect with Kerberos, LDAP, and other centralized authentication management systems.

This documentation covers the version of Ansible noted in the upper left corner of this page. We maintain multiple versions of Ansible and of the documentation, so please be sure you are using the version of the documentation that covers the version of Ansible you’re using. For recent features, we note the version of Ansible where the feature was added.

Ansible releases a new major release of Ansible approximately three to four times per year. The core application evolves somewhat conservatively, valuing simplicity in language design and setup. Contributors develop and change modules and plugins, hosted in collections since version 2.10, much more quickly.

Installation, Upgrade & Configuration

- Installation Guide
  - Installing Ansible
  - Configuring Ansible
- Ansible Porting Guides

Using Ansible

- User Guide
  - Ansible Quickstart Guide
  - Ansible concepts
  - Getting Started
  - How to build your inventory
  - Working with dynamic inventory
  - Patterns: targeting hosts and groups
  - Introduction to ad-hoc commands
  - Connection methods and details
  - Working with command line tools
  - Working With Playbooks
  - Understanding privilege escalation: become
  - Ansible Vault
  - Working With Modules
  - Working With Plugins
  - Ansible and BSD
  - Windows Guides
  - Using collections

Contributing to Ansible

- Ansible Community Guide
  - Getting started
  - Going deeper
  - Working with the Ansible repo
  - Traditional Table of Contents

Extending Ansible

- Developer Guide
  - Adding modules and plugins locally
  - Should you develop a module?
  - Ansible module development: getting started
  - Contributing your module to Ansible
  - Conventions, tips, and pitfalls
  - Ansible and Python 3
  - Debugging modules
  - Module format and documentation
  - Windows module development walkthrough
  - Developing Cisco ACI modules
  - Guidelines for Ansible Amazon AWS module development
  - OpenStack Ansible Modules
  - oVirt Ansible Modules
  - Guidelines for VMware module development
  - Information for submitting a group of modules
  - Testing Ansible
  - The lifecycle of an Ansible module
  - Developing plugins
  - Developing dynamic inventory
  - Developing the Ansible Core Engine
  - Ansible module architecture
  - Python API
  - Rebasing a pull request
  - Using and Developing Module Utilities
  - Developing collections
  - Collection Galaxy metadata structure
  - Ansible architecture

Common Ansible Scenarios

- Public Cloud Guides
- Network Technology Guides
- Virtualization and Containerization Guides

Ansible for Network Automation

- Ansible for Network Automation
  - Getting Started with Ansible for Network Automation
  - Advanced Topics with Ansible for Network Automation
  - Developer Guide for Network Automation

Ansible Galaxy

- Galaxy User Guide
  - Finding collections on Galaxy
  - Installing collections
  - Finding roles on Galaxy
  - Installing roles from Galaxy
- Galaxy Developer Guide
  - Creating collections for Galaxy
  - Creating roles for Galaxy

Reference & Appendices

- Module Index
- Playbook Keywords
- Return Values
- Ansible Configuration Settings
- Controlling how Ansible behaves: precedence rules
- YAML Syntax
- Python 3 Support
- Interpreter Discovery
- Release and maintenance
- Testing Strategies
- Sanity Tests
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Glossary
- Ansible Reference: Module Utilities
- Special Variables
- Red Hat Ansible Tower
- Logging Ansible output

Roadmaps

- Ansible Roadmap
  - Ansible 2.9
  - Ansible 2.8
  - Ansible 2.7
  - Ansible 2.6
  - Ansible 2.5
  - Ansible 2.4
  - Ansible 2.3
  - Ansible 2.2
  - Ansible 2.1