Ansible is an SSH-based orchestration and configuration management tool based on the push principle: desired states, for example configurations of operating systems, are pushed from a control node to a target node. Ansible is very lightweight because it does not need a specific client. This makes it ideal for controlling and configuring infrastructure components such as
load balancers, firewalls or API-controlled systems in general.
This is one of the reasons why Ansible has developed into a solution that is very much in demand in recent years. This was certainly fueled by the purchase by Red Hat in 2015 and the partnership between Ansible and providers of network solutions such as Cisco, BigIP, PaloAlto, etc.
A popular use case for Ansible is automated deployments that are triggered via a CI/CD pipeline.
