Ansible is an open source IT Configuration Management, Deployment, and Orchestration tool. NetBrain system integrates a new node (Ansible Task) into the runbook, and it allows developers and IT operation teams to query information on multiple hosts or push bulk network configurations more easily and quickly. See Ansible for more details.

The following technology components will be examined in the scope of this document:

▪Ansible —  Ansible is built on the simple, powerful, and agentless foundational capabilities derived from the Ansible project. With Ansible, developers and IT operation teams can more easily and quickly deploy IT services, applications, and environments, enabling them to remove barriers between IT teams by automating routine activities.

▪Playbook — Playbook is in .yaml format and used to express configurations, deployment, and orchestration in Ansible. It allows Ansible to perform operations on managed nodes. Each Playbook maps a group of hosts to a set of roles.

▪Inventory — Inventory is a description of the nodes that can be accessed by Ansible. The configuration file lists either the IP address or hostname of each node that is accessed by Ansible.

▪Role — To complete a complex task, a set of playbooks is usually required to be executed in a certain order. This group of playbooks is called a Role, which can be viewed as a file structure for easier internal grouping and sharing. Roles are ways of automatically loading certain vars files, tasks, and handlers based on a known file structure. Grouping content by roles also allows easy sharing of roles with other users.

▪SCM — Source Control Management. SCM is a repository used to manage the changes of Ansible Playbook, Roles, and Projects.

▪NetBrain Ansible Agent — an application used to receive tasks assigned by NetBrain Front Server. It calls Ansible command line to execute Playbook and return the execution results to NetBrain Front Server and IE front end to display.

▪Inventory Template — a method to define Inventory in .yaml format for instantiation.