Ansible is an Open-Source software provisioning, configuration management and application deployment tool developed and maintained by Red Hat Software. Ansible runs on many Unix-like operating systems such as Linux
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Ansible is an Open-Source software provisioning, configuration management and application deployment tool developed and maintained by Red Hat Software. Ansible runs on many Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, MacOS and Debian, and also spans into the realm of Microsoft Windows as well. As complicated as it may sound, simply, it’s a remote device management tool designed to remotely control and manage an edge device, which in most cases is a Linux computer.
Ansible can act as an Linux Edge Device management tool that works from a central Management Node (a.k.a. Ansible Server), which can connect to the other edge devices through Secure Shell (SSH) tunnel. The Ansible Server can connect to those ‘nodes’ and push out a small program called Ansible Module, which is then executed within the nodes and cleaned up afterwards.
The Ansible Server node acts as the controlling node by reading the playbook and executing the tasks and plays listed in it on the specific groups of hosts, as described in the Inventory. Ansible Server monitors the execution of the modules on each host and makes sure that once the modules are installed properly, the unwanted files are removed during the cleanup process.
Ansible is primarily used in remote software provisioning, configuration management and application deployment purposes and is NOT intended to be used in Linux Edge Devices, although most of our potential customers have had interest in using it for the same. For the most part, Ansible executes the playbook, cleans everything up and closes the connection to the host after everything is done. Although, managing an edge linux device requires much more than that. Some of the few key drawbacks in using Ansible as an edge linux IoT device management tool are:
And that’s where us, JFrog Connect (formerly Upswift) comes into play!
We provide you with a dedicated linux edge IoT device management platform, which is specifically built around the customers’ needs revolving around managing their linux based IoT edge devices, plus almost all the features Ansibles offers. We have analyzed the customer needs throughout the years, and have been perfecting our platform to provide a better service to our customers by integrating,
And above all, a background agent in your edge devices that can be configured to handle almost any unpredictable circumstances such as connection losses and update interruptions designed with the philosophy: “Set-up Once, Manage Forever.”
Feel like moving from Ansible into a more complete solution, specially designed for Internet of Things? Try out our remote IoT edge device management platform by signing up for the Free Trial!