Talk:Ansible (software)

Users section
Is this section encyclopedic? It contributes little value. Who cares who uses it? It reads like an advertisement. Should it be removed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.157.24.179 (talk) 03:29, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Seems like somebody already deleted. In my opinion it was a useful information. Tech201805 (talk) 12:17, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Proposed changes
Hi - Bill Nottingham here. I'm a product manager at Ansible. We recently did an audit of our Wikipedia page and would suggest changes to improve the accuracy of the article. If you have any questions, please write on my Talk page. Thank you.

In the chart on the right:

In the "Written in" section, it should say "Python, PowerShell"
 * Already done. Tech201805 (talk) 12:18, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Opening paragraph should read:

Ansible is an open-source automation engine that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, and orchestration.[3] Once installed on a control node, Ansible connects in an agentless manner to a managed node via SSH, remote PowerShell, or via other remote APIs.[4]

Last sentence of third paragraph should read:

Red Hat acquired Ansible, Inc. in October 2015.[9][10] changes passive voice to active voice
 * Already done. Tech201805 (talk) 12:24, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Architecture section – first paragraph, third sentence should read:

Nodes are managed by a controlling machine over SSH, remote PowerShell, or other protocols.

Move second paragraph of Architecture section to end of section to improve flow, also first sentence of paragraph should read:

To orchestrate nodes, Ansible deploys modules to nodes.

Design goals section – third and fourth bullets should read:

Secure. Ansible does not deploy agents to nodes. Only OpenSSH or WinRM is required, which are thoroughly tested.[14]

Highly reliable. Properly written Ansible Playbooks can be idempotent, in order to prevent unexpected side-effects on the managed systems.[15]

Modules section – second sentences should read:

Each module is mostly standalone and can be written in a standard scripting language (such as Python, Perl, Ruby, bash, PowerShell, etc.).

Inventory configuration section – last sentence should read:

Ansible can also be pointed towards a custom Dynamic Inventory script, which can pull data from cloud providers, provisioning frameworks, and any other source of inventory information.

Playbooks section – first and second sentences should read:

Playbooks are Ansible’s configuration, deployment, and orchestration language. They can describe a policy users want their remote systems to enforce, or a set of steps in a general IT process.

New section for Tower:

Tower
Ansible Tower is an API, web service, and web-based console designed to make Ansible usable for IT teams. It is a hub for automation tasks. Tower is a commerical product supported by Red Hat, Inc.

source: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/tower.html


 * took the liberty of adding the initial version of tower info, please improve as necessary. --Richlv (talk) 23:29, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Platform support – second paragraph, third sentence should read:

Ansible can manage Windows[20] nodes via remote PowerShell starting from version 1.7.[19]

New sentence at the end of the Platform section:

As of release 2.1, Ansible can manage network devices such as switches from Cisco, Juniper, Arista, among others.

source: https://www.ansible.com/network-automation

Wenottingham (talk) 21:59, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Bad sentence
This sentence doesn't make sense and needs fixing: "One may register for updates in releasing Tower as Open Source Software."

Description
The description provided of Ansible (apparently taken from the company that creates it), is OK to have. However the description should be amended with additional description on how in practice a company typically uses Ansible Roles. The current description alone is to vague and broad and doesn't allow the user to really understand why a company may use Ansible and in which circumstances. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nayumadehrafti (talk • contribs) 14:10, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Why timeline?
Is version timeline relevant information? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.240.124.12 (talk • contribs) 11:06, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I think it's terrible (ugly and uninformative). If release date history is important to the article the sane way to deliver that information would use a list or a compact, two-column table. The timeline graphic is an assault on the eyes and makes the article actively unpleasant to look at.  Presumably that was not the intent when it was added to the article last October.  Quale (talk) 02:30, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Additionally, currently, it's inaccurate and/or misinformative. Current version is 2.16.3 while the timelines covers 3.x, 4.x and even 5.x versions. Source for the versions: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/tags Daniel.Pineda.96 (talk) 01:14, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Versioning for Ansible got complicated starting with 2.10 when Ansible was split into ansible-core and a community ansible package. Ansible core is at release 2.16, but ansible (community) is at 9.x.  See for example https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/roadmap/COLLECTIONS_9.html.  The timeline graph in this article is still awful, though. Quale (talk) 04:18, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I would say that's even more reason to not use that timeline. Daniel.Pineda.96 (talk) 06:06, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Overmuch product differentiation?
An awful lot of the details here seem to amount to product differentiation from competing products per numerous references to Ansible's and Red Hat's own websites. Should some of this be weeded out? Largoplazo (talk) 01:23, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

This article is too technical
I don't understand what this article is getting at. What does "an open-source software provisioning, configuration management, and application-deployment tool enabling infrastructure as code" mean? As far as I can tell, the idea is if you have to set up 50 corporate machines all running the same flavour of Windows 10 with the same version of Office and corporate packages, you can use this to push out the changes on all of them simultaneously. If it's that, can we say something like that? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  09:13, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Why is licence both GPL and proprietary ?
On the repository it's GPLv3. Tfenasse (talk) 13:32, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Platform support section
Most of the info in this section is outdated, and I'm not sure updating it is a good solution as things like supported Python versions is bound to change fairly frequently, and this shouldn't be a tutorial on how to install Ansible. Most of the information present is also repeated from elsewhere in the article, so my suggestion is to move any non-repeated information to an appropriate section, and delete the "Platform support" section. FortranDan (talk) 19:33, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Incorrect link for Semaphore
In the ‘Architecture’ -> ‘Ansible Automation Platform’ section there is a link for Semaphore which directs users to the wrong application. The application referenced in the article appears to be ‘SemaphoreUI’: https://github.com/semaphoreui/semaphore

https://www.semui.co/

but the link directs users to the unrelated product ‘SemaphoreCI’: Semaphore (software)

https://semaphoreci.com 2600:1700:4671:2040:4AE:D195:DE10:7406 (talk) 01:44, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I see two URLs related to Semaphore: this and this. Both lead to material related to Semaphore UI. Largoplazo (talk) 09:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, the references direct you to the correct application. However, if you click on the word ‘Semaphore’ in the article it takes you to a Wikipedia page for the wrong application. 2600:1700:4671:2040:F408:F03E:1B3B:B6F4 (talk) 19:42, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see. And I see that you've fixed it, cool. Largoplazo (talk) 21:46, 25 April 2024 (UTC)