Ansible versus other tools
If you look at the design principles in the first commit compared to the current version, you will notice that while there have been some additions and tweaks, the core principles remain pretty much intact:
- Agentless: Everything should be managed by the SSH daemon using the WinRM protocol in the case of Windows machines or API calls—there should be no reliance on custom agents or additional ports that need to be opened or interacted with on the target host. The machine running Ansible should need line of sight of the target resource network-wise.
- Minimal: You should be able to manage new remote machines without installing any new software on the target host; each Linux target host will typically have at least SSH and Python installed as part of a minimal installation, which is all needed to run Ansible.
- Descriptive: You should be able to describe your infrastructure, stack, or task in a language readable by machines and humans. ...
