You are reading an unmaintained version of the Ansible documentation. Unmaintained Ansible versions can contain unfixed security vulnerabilities (CVE). Please upgrade to a maintained version. See the latest Ansible documentation.

Getting started with Ansible

Ansible automates the management of remote systems and controls their desired state. A basic Ansible environment has three main components:

Control node: A system on which Ansible is installed. You run Ansible commands such as ansible or ansible-inventory on a control node.
Managed node: A remote system, or host, that Ansible controls.
Inventory: A list of managed nodes that are logically organized. You create an inventory on the control node to describe host deployments to Ansible.

Ready to start using Ansible? Complete the following steps to get up and running:

Install Ansible. Visit the installation guide for complete details.
```
python3 -m pip install --user ansible
```
Create an inventory by adding the IP address or fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of one or more remote systems to /etc/ansible/hosts. The following example adds the IP addresses of three virtual machines in KVM:
```
[myvirtualmachines]
192.0.2.50
192.0.2.51
192.0.2.52
```

Verify the hosts in your inventory.

ansible all --list-hosts

hosts (1):
0.2.50
0.2.51
0.2.52

Set up SSH connections so Ansible can connect to the managed nodes.
1. Add your public SSH key to the authorized_keys file on each remote system.
2. Test the SSH connections, for example:
```
ssh [email protected]
```
If the username on the control node is different on the host, you need to pass the -u option with the ansible command.

Ping the managed nodes.

ansible all -m ping

192.0.2.50 | SUCCESS => {
  "ansible_facts": {
    "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
    }
192.0.2.51 | SUCCESS => {
  "ansible_facts": {
    "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
    }
192.0.2.52 | SUCCESS => {
  "ansible_facts": {
    "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3"
    },
    "changed": false,
    "ping": "pong"
    }

Congratulations! You are now using Ansible. Continue by learning how to build an inventory.