Ansible: Up and Running: Automating Configuration Management and Deployment the Easy Way,

by Lorin Hochstein

Among the many configuration management tools available, Ansible has some distinct advantagesóitís minimal in nature, you donít need to install anything on your nodes, and it has an easy learning curve. With this updated second edition, youíll learn how to be productive with this tool quickly, whether youíre a developer deploying code to production or a system administrator looking for a better automation solution.

Authors Lorin Hochstein and RenÈ Moser show you how to write playbooks (Ansibleís configuration management scripts), manage remote servers, and explore the toolís real power: built-in declarative modules. Youíll discover that Ansible has the functionality you needóand the simplicity you desire.

Manage Windows machines, and automate network device configuration Manage your fleet from your web browser with Ansible Tower Understand how Ansible differs from other configuration management systems Use the YAML file format to write your own playbooks Work with a complete example to deploy a non-trivial application Deploy applications to Amazon EC2 and other cloud platforms Create Docker images and deploy Docker containers with Ansible

This book is best read start to finish, with later chapters building on earlier ones. Because itís written in a tutorial style, you can follow along on your own machine. Most examples focus on web applications.

Genres: Programming, Technology, Computer Science, Nonfiction, Technical, Reference, Software

432 pages, Paperback

First published December 8, 2014

Reviews

[Hesam · Rating 4 out of 5]

یکی از جذابیت‌های همیشگی دنیای کامپیوترها برام ماشینی‌کردن و آتُمیت‌کردن فرآیندها بوده
در برنامه‌نویسی همین لذت را تجربه می‌کنی اما انگار کن کل یک سناریوی کامل از صفر تا صد را یکجا بنویسی و اجرا کنی
نکته‌ی جالب کتاب‌های فنی (طبعا تجربه‌ی من در برق و کامپیوتر هست) اینه که خالی از حکمت‌های زیسته زندگی نیستند
جایی از کتاب اشاره‌ای به سخنی از آلن کِی، دانشمند علوم کامپیوتر برنده جایزه‌ی تورینگ و از پیشگامان برنامه‌نویسی شیءگرا دارد که بسیار قابل تامل است:

simple things should be simple
complex things should be possible

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-4.5 stars :)

I had a short list of issues with this book & I remember that these were not really trivial ones, but ... I've lost it :) So all I do remember now is purely positive:

* proper introduction to Ansible: CHECK!
* practical examples: CHECK!
* application in cloud scenarios: CHECK!
* well shaped code samples: CHECK!
* some 'beyond the basics' scenarios: CHECK!
* Ansible + containers: CHECK!
* day-to-day work (ops) with Ansible: CHECK!

Sometimes it was a bit dry, some topics were not interesting at all (Tower ...), but it's a decent start. If you decide to rely on web tutorials only it'd not be a big loss, but this book surely can't be called a waste of time & money.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ansible is deceptively simple. In a few hours, you can have the main idea and be writing playbooks. There are a number of nuances though that will make your life much easier. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

[John Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb - The Ansible bible

Ansible up and running is a really super addition to the O’Reilly up and running series.

Starting with the basics Lorin takes his readers through the little and large of Ansible.

The book starts with the very basics and builds all the way, you’ll see how to scale your ansible deployments in terms of both complexity and capacity.

Topics include:

The basics, complex play books, scaling using Roles, multiple hosts etc

Writing custom modules - nice to know how

Intengration with - Vagrant, Amazon Web Service, Docker

Debugging

Ansible is a lot of fun to use, it’s simple but powerful and Ansible up and Running provides the perfect text to let you learn and enjoy Ansible.

Pros:

I really like the idea of a common deployment theme (mezzanine) which runs throughout the book.

Nice appedix on SSH - very welcome since ansible uses this under the hood.

Cons:

Some of the examples I tried didn’t work out of the box. Be sure you define versions when you install things via pip (Lorin actually shows you how in chapter 6)

I can see this book becoming the Ansible bible - if some one writes an Ansible cookbook to stand besides it we’re all home and dry.

So would I recomend the book: Without doubt, no matter what your level of ansible use I can bet you’ll gain from reading through this. If you’re a beginner, just like me, it’s absoluetely SUPER

I’m a big fan of the O’Reilly up and running series and can only hope they continue to produce such informative and fun books (please give us more).

[Karol Szczepański · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book describes a lot of ansible features without focusing too much on a single one of them. It might be a little outdated in some parts some bit ly links do not point to the correct place any more, but it lays out the concepts of ansible just fine. I'd prefer if the author described ansible vault a little more though, because it seems like an important ansible component and the book left me thinking about what scenarios it could be utilized in.

[Shane Sexton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent guide to using Ansible that I find myself frequently referring back to. While the online Ansible documentation is very helpful for working with individual modules, it can be harder to "put it all together." That's where Ansible Up & Running comes in.

[Kerszi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Książka o dużym potencjale. Dużo przykładów, również dla początkujących z Ansible. Niemniej trzeba znać podstawy Linuxa. Chociaż Ansible jest też na Windowsa. Na pewno do niej wrócę, jeżeli będę chciał coś sprawdzić.

[Phúc Võ · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good introduction for why using Ansible, and providing a good example of using Ansible with Vagrant, Docker, ... (things that an operator engineer would touch)

[Arsenii Yamnii · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. But may be little shorter)))

[Andrés J. Fry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little outdated, but is a really good book for learning Ansible.

[yacoob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good, no-nonsense Ansible introduction. I'd probably rearrange the sections a bit - the debugging chapter tucked at the very end would be more useful to me with my hands-on approach if it'd appear somewhere past the initial concepts. I could probably also shave some of the additional explanations ("here's how to make script executable") - at few points they seemed really out of place, and unnecessary. This way or the other, it was a very informative book. Recommended to anyone who's considering using Ansible.

[Rrrrrron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great intro. Concise and to the point for someone who knows little about dev ops beyond basic scipting and setting up his own development environments on a unix/linux machine (mostly, python/flask, node, react/flux/webpack). Stopped after page 80-ish as we moved back to Heroku from Digitial Ocean as we realized that there was just too much to do for a 2 person startup at this point.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not your typical O'Reilly guide to a language. Written idiosyncratically, and not presenting simple recipes to get you started with Ansible, it is perhaps, as the title suggests, better for one who is already 'Up and Running' with Ansible, or, at least, complements this book with extensive reading of the online documentation.

[Yamir Encarnacion · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books covers all the basics well

This book is meant to be read from start to finish and in written in a tutorial style.

As a side note, I found Ansible to be easier to understand than Chef which I had already spent some time studying.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

It will get you started with ansible pretty quickly, but after the first half of the book, you're probably going to switch back to the documentation unless you specifically need to use vagrant or docker.

[Jaroslav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice overview of the tool we're using at our company. Great chapters about using Ansible with AWS and Docker. I also learned about several arcane features of SSH. Some examples are too big and tedious for a book, I had to skim through them.

[Ernestas Poskus · Rating 4 out of 5]

To the point

[Luca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good introduction. I liked the fact the author chose to deploy an app as a main drive of the examples

[Chris King · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very concise introduction to Ansible.

[Jarkko Tervonen · Rating 1 out of 5]

300 pages of Ansible configuration files. Interesting...

[Dmitry · Rating 4 out of 5]

good enough

[William Högman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear and concise overview of ansible

[Gregthory LeBaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best book on Ansible.