Ansible is an open source IT automation tool. I tend to describe it as a task-runner with a host database (which Ansible calls the inventory). A big selling point is no agent software is needed on managed remote hosts. Details at the Ansible website: https://www.ansible.com/use-cases

tl;dr: If you’re just beginning with Ansible this might help: https://github.com/dale42/ansible-starter

I’ve been experimenting with Ansible for managing a handful of Drupal 7 and WordPress sites I look after. Ansible might be overkill, but this is also a learning project. So far I’ve been happy with results.

My Ansible learning journey began with small amounts of confusion and frustration. There are lots of different bits to learn. Ansible’s file organization is flexible, the examples are data center oriented, and there are multiple syntax styles. This makes many of the examples confusing until the context and details becomes familiar. And I was getting frustrated with file path issues.

As a resource for other new Ansible learners I’ve created the setup I wish I’d started with. It’s at https://github.com/dale42/ansible-starter