Tom Browder writes:
> I'm considering using Ansible (from Debian packages) for maintaining > multiple remote Debian servers. The master server will be my Debian laptop. > > I have three questions: > > 1. If you have experience with Debian ansible, are you or were you > satisfied with the experience? I've use Ansible with Debian for about 5 years. I don't have any complaints. Managing Debian with Ansible is pretty similar to managing just about every other Linux distribution, with a few minor tweaks (e.g. using the 'apt' module for managing packages instead of yum/dnf). > 2. There are many published books in print about Ansible. Can you recommend > one for an experienced sysadmin who is an Ansible newbie? The documentation is quite good. It might be all you need. For a more narrative introduction, Jeff Geerling's "Ansible for DevOps" is pretty good: https://leanpub.com/ansible-for-devops > 3. If you don't recommend Ansible, can you recommend any other similar > system? I've also used SaltStack. It's also very good. Anecdotally, I've found it to be significantly faster than Ansible. I find that Ansible can be less free-form than SaltStack, but that's not necessarily a bad thing (take a glance at how looping/iteration works to get a sense for what I mean). I preferred working with SaltCloud for initial provisioning of servers, though. Really, either one would be perfectly adequate for the needs you describe. > Thanks. > > -Tom -- Mike Oliver
