Why not use something that's already available, such as Bourne shell script or PowerShell? For simple deployments, shell scripts may be a better approach. But as our deployment process becomes more complex, it is much harder to handle every possible initial state using the shell's conditional statements.
Dealing with differences between initial states is actually something Ansible is especially good at. Unlike traditional shell scripts, which use the imperative form (move this file, edit that file, run a particular command), Ansible playbooks, as they are called, use the declarative form (make sure the file is available in this path, make sure the file contains specified lines, make sure the program is running, make sure the program completes successfully).
This declarative approach also helps to achieve idempotence. Idempotence is a feature of a function that means applying the function several times over will have exactly the same results as a single application...
