Ansible AWS vs. Ansible Tower

Introduction

Open source software is Ansible AWS. The tool aids in defining, administering, and deploying services as well as their control via automation playbooks. In any case, the web-based Ansible Tower tool is also employed for IT automation. Ansible Tower and Ansible AWS provide various management resources to businesses. This article covers detailed knowledge of Ansible AWS vs. Ansible Tower and their differences.

What is Ansible AWS?

The likelihood that your cloud project will be successful is significantly increased by using Ansible to automate your apps in AWS. IT organizations may dynamically provision entire workloads like never before because of the breadth of AWS’s capabilities.

Features of Ansible AWS

• Authentication

You can use the AWS authentication process with the help of the automation tool Ansible.  Additionally, you can choose the module layouts based on the secret keys.

• The Red Hat Automation Controller

It is easier to know what AWS instances you have without saying how they were started. To access the whole AWS infrastructure, you must provide your AWS credentials.

• Migration is Super Easy

Ansible AWS makes it incredibly simple to migrate dozens of workloads. The Ansible playbook language must be used for this. Both managing the infrastructure and deploying the application will be made more accessible. To define your application locally, you can also utilize Ansible AWS. Once completed, redefining the infrastructure is very simple.

• IT Automation

A robust IT automation and orchestration tool for the cloud environment is Ansible. One of the alluring advantages of Ansible AWS is the excellent portability and simplicity of developing out-of-the-box modules.

• Flexibility

This cloud-based software is the ideal solution for changing and expanding business needs. With AWS, Ansible is highly adaptable. You can adjust the deployment’s size based on your needs.

Pros of Ansible AWS

• The cloud group of Ansible and AWS provides multiple services that rapidly deploy and scale your application.

• All the complicated AWS environments can be provisioned smoothly.

Cons of Ansible AWS

• Ansible is agentless, which means it does not track dependencies. It just executes the sequential tasks. That can lead to several unexpected happenings.

• Creates the complex data structure and control flow.

Ansible Tower

The commercial version of Ansible is called Ansible Tower.  Additionally, it interfaces with various components of your current technology infrastructure, including networking, security, application deployment, storage, and software development lifecycle procedures, just like Ansible.

Features of Ansible Tower

• Role-Based Access Control

Only a tiny number of automation tools offer role-based access. This kind of access may lessen security risks and keep sensitive information in the hands of a select few.

• Real-Time Job Status Update

Ansible Tower provides you with a real-time job status update. It will continuously update you on active inventories’ status and actions.

• Red Hat

Integration of Red Hat products facilitates the deployment, provisioning, management, and automation of computer infrastructure in both physical and cloud environments.

• RESTful APIs

Automation is greatly facilitated by integration with RESTful. The software deployment and configuration are substantially simpler.

Ansible Tower: Best Practices

• Use Source Control

While Tower allows playbooks stored directly on the Tower server, it is ideal for keeping your playbooks, roles, and any related information in source control. As a result, you will have a record of when and why you modified the rules that automate your infrastructure. It also makes it simple to share playbooks with different areas of your infrastructure or team.

• Use Dynamic Inventory Source

It is better to design an inventory sync process and use Tower’s support for dynamic inventory if you have an external source of truth for your infrastructure, whether it is a cloud provider or a local CMDB (including cloud inventory sources and custom inventory scripts). This keeps your inventory up-to-date at all times.

• Variable Management for Inventory

Rather than using group_vars/ and host_vars/, it is recommended to keep variable data alongside the objects in Tower (see the inventory editor). The Tower can sync dynamic inventory sources with the database if the Override Variables option is not selected.

• Autoscaling

For auto-scaling scenarios or provisioning integration, using the “callback” capability to allow newly booting instances to request configuration is highly handy.

• Larger Host Counts

Consider increasing the number of “forks” on a job template to increase the parallelism of execution runs.

• Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment

A Continuous Integration system, such as Jenkins, should perform a curl request to a job template in order to create a Tower job. There should be no need to prompt for any passwords when using the job template credentials.

• LDAP Authentication Performance Tip

By default, every time an LDAP user logs in to Tower, all user-related characteristics are updated in the database. Due to performance concerns in some circumstances, this procedure may be avoided. You can disable the setting AUTH_LDAP_ALWAYS_UPDATE_USER to avoid this.

Pros of Ansible Tower

The foundation of Ansible and Ansible Tower’s outstanding list of advantages is simplicity and use. Ansible Tower’s main advantage from an enterprise strategy standpoint is that it frees administrators from time-consuming manual work to concentrate on initiatives that assist the business in gaining more value. Here are some of the more particular advantages:

• The dashboard provides access to every aspect of the Ansible system, including inventory status, recent job activity, and specific host data.

• You can update and deploy your applications without writing scripts or unique code.

• Port portal mode’s streamlined user interface displays a single-page view of jobs and job templates. Users that need to run Ansible jobs but do not need in-depth knowledge of Ansible or Tower will particularly benefit from this.

• You can incorporate Ansible into your existing toolkit and environment thanks to the fully documented REST API.

Cons of Ansible Tower

• Does not have the notion of a state. Therefore, it does not count the dependencies.

• The debugging process takes time, sometimes too long to diagnose and address the problem.

Ansible AWS vs. Ansible Tower – Differences

• Managing Cloud

On the one hand, AWS integration with the Ansible cloud goes beyond a simple server collection. It offers several services that help with the quick deployment and scalability of the applications.

Both solutions automate a cloud environment similarly. The Ansible Tower’s connected virtual machine’s host entry automates the IT environment while saving users time and effort.

• Workflow Support and Migration

It is evident that Ansible AWS has nothing to do with workflow management, but it facilitates user migration. The playbook for managing infrastructure and deploying the application must also be created. You can deploy the application locally using this. Once the initial deployment is complete, redeploying requires little time.

However, Ansible Tower gives you the option to write the playbooks. The workflow sheets are produced with the use of these playbooks. One of the key advantages of the Ansible Tower is workflow sheets. This procedure will enable you to build a suitable CI/CD pipeline.

• Automation

In particular, Ansible AWS offers secure automation that can prevent misconfiguration. Only chosen employees of the company are allowed access, thanks to the assistance of AWS.

However, the authorized user can access automation through Ansible Tower. Granular authorization capabilities and features for password and data encryption.

• Support of the Cluster of Environment vs. Modules

Several Ansible modules are compatible with AWS in this case. These integrations make AWS more effective and provide it with more alluring features.

Ansible Tower, in contrast, does not use several modules; instead, it interacts with a cluster of the environment. Every environment values particular kinds of nodes differently. The other node will assume its position to ensure the continuous workflow if one node doesn’t complete the efficient task.

Conclusion

To sum up, Ansible is one of the most excellent tools for automating AWS. Ansible AWS is a brand-new solution that helps increase productivity and significantly save time and money.

Another aspect is Ansible Tower, a web-based connection between Ansible and Tower. The integration creates an easy-to-use solution that makes it simple to understand and set up the IT infrastructure and automation duties.