I do use Ansible. I wouldn't say extensively, but definitely for deploying standard configurations. That's the key point: standard configurations. When everything you deploy is a one-off, bespoke system, tools like Ansible can be more work than just doing the work.
For example, to add a user to a system you ssh in, run a useradd command, and a passwd command. Done. Doing this on one machine is simple and quick. Doing it with Ansible is not so simple and not so quick. Assuming you have an Ansible control node ready, you need to prep the target machine with a recent version of Python plus anything Ansible plays need to function like package management tools, and create an account with sudo privileges for Ansible to use for running its plays. Then you need to add the machine to the inventory (if it isn't already), create a playbook (or add to an existing playbook) with the user/group information and password for the new user, and then you can run the playbook to make the changes. That's a lot of overhead for a one-off task. But you get 3 or 4 machines that need this user added? Now you're scaling automation. -- \m/ (--) \m/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.blu.org https://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
