ansible/rst/index.rst

.. Director documentation master file, created by sphinx-quickstart on Sat Sep 27 13:23:22 2008.
   You can adapt this file completely to your liking, but it should at least
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Ansible
=======

Ansible is a radically simple deployment, configuration, and command execution framework.
Other tools in this space have been too complicated for too long, require too much bootstrapping, 
and have too much learning curve.  Ansible is dead simple and painless to extend.  For comparison, Puppet and Chef have about 60k lines of code.  Ansible's core is a little over 1000 lines.  

Ansible isn't just for configuration -- it's also great for Ad-Hoc tasks, 
quickly firing off commands against nodes.  Where Ansible excels though, is expressing complex multi-node deployment processes, executing complex sequences of commands on different hosts through "playbooks".

Extending ansible does not require programming in any particular language -- you can write modules
as scripts or programs that return simple JSON.  It's also trivially easy to just execute
useful shell commands.

Why use Ansible versus something else?  (Puppet, Chef, Fabric, Capistrano,
mCollective, Func, SaltStack, etc?) Ansible will have far less code, it
will be (by extension) more correct, and it will be the easiest thing to hack on and
use you'll ever see -- regardless of your favorite language of choice.

Systems management doesn't have to be complicated.  Ansible's docs will remain 
short & simple, and the source will be blindingly obvious.


Design Goals
````````````

* Dead simple setup
* Super fast & parallel by default
* No server or client daemons; use existing SSHd out of the box
* No additional software required on client boxes
* Modules can be written in ANY language
* Awesome API for creating very powerful distributed scripts
* Be very usable as non-root
* Create the easiest config management system to use, ever.

Communicate and Get Involved
````````````````````````````

Your ideas and contributions are welcome.  We're also happy to help you with questions about Ansible.

* Join the `ansible-project mailing list <http://groups.google.com/group/ansible-project>`_ on Google Groups
* Join `#ansible <irc://irc.freenode.net/#ansible>`_ on the `freenode IRC network <http://freenode.net/>`_
* Visit the `project page <https://github.com/ansible/ansible>`_ on Github

  - View the `issue tracker <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues>`_


Contents
========

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 3

   gettingstarted
   patterns
   examples
   modules
   YAMLScripts
   playbooks
   api
   man

About the Author
````````````````

Ansible was originally developed by Michael DeHaan, a Raleigh, NC based software developer and architect.  
He created other popular DevOps programs such as Cobbler, the popular Linux install server.
Cobbler is used to deploy mission critical systems all over the planet, in industries
ranging from massively multiplayer gaming, core internet infrastructure, finance,
chip design, and more.  Michael also helped co-author of Func, a precursor to Ansible, which is used
to orchestrate systems in lots of diverse places.  He's worked on systems software for
IBM, Motorola, Red Hat's Emerging Technologies Group, Puppet Labs, and rPath.