The Advantages of Ansible

There are many infrastructure automation frameworks besides Ansible—namely Chef, Puppet, and SaltStack. Each framework offers its unique features; no one right framework fits all organizations. In this section, let’s take a look at some of the advantages of Ansible and why I believe it is a good tool for network automation.

The advantages will be listed with limited comparison to other frameworks to not start a flame war. Other frameworks might adopt some of the same philosophies or certain aspects of Ansible, but rarely do they contain all of the features that I will be mentioning. It is the combination of all the following features and philosophies that makes Ansible ideal for network automation.

Agentless

Unlike some of its peers, Ansible does not require a strict master-client model. No software or agent needs to be installed on the client that communicates back to the server. Outside of the Python interpreter, which many platforms...