Ansible as an orchestrator

When it comes to orchestration of any sort, Ansible really shines over other tools. Of course, as the creators of Ansible would say, it's more than a configuration management tool, which is true. Ansible can find a place for itself in any of the orchestration scenarios discussed earlier. It was designed to manage complex multitier deployments. Even if you have your infrastructure being automated with other configuration management tools, you can consider Ansible to orchestrate those.

Let's discuss the specific features that Ansible ships with, which are useful for orchestration.

Multiple playbooks and ordering

Unlike most other configuration management systems, Ansible supports running different playbooks at different times to configure or manage the same infrastructure. You can create one playbook to set up the application stack for the first time, and another to push updates over time in a certain manner. Another property of the playbook is that it can contain more...