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Open-source IT automation appAnsible is an IT app that automates and simplifies repetitive, tedious, and complex operations. When installing packages or configuring large numbers of servers this app can help. It automates cloud provisioning, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, configuration management, and many other IT needs. It does not use agents and additional custom security infrastructure, so it is easy to deploy. More than 1,000 companies are using Ansible, making it one of the popular choices for software automation. What is Ansible?Ansible boasts a simple yet efficient architecture. It works by connecting to your nodes and pushing small programs to them. It works over SSH and does not require special servers, daemons, or libraries to work. Its text editor and a command-line tool are enough to get your work done. You need only to describe your infrastructure in the text file. By doing so, all the information about the desired state will be organized in playbooks. The app will then be able to gather all node information—IP address or operating system—into facts. sam.cmd.push(function() { sam.display('review-app-page-desktop'); });Ansible is widely regarded as an easy-to-learn app, allowing users to get up to speed and finish their tasks quickly. It comes with clear documentation, which helps users to learn the workflow and logic in a short amount of time. It also has no dependency system, making troubleshooting easier. As noted, the app is agentless, which means less maintenance overhead and performance degradations. Lastly, the app’s configuration files are written in YAML, which is easier to read and allows you to describe your automation jobs in plain English. However, this does not mean that the app Ansible has no caveats that need consideration. For one, its UI cannot do everything that the command line interface can. Secondly, the app has no notion of state. It does not keep track of dependencies. Unlike Puppet, it simply executes a series of tasks and stops when it finishes, fails, or encounters an error. It does not maintain an extensive catalog for ordering that allows users to reach a defined state. Finally, Ansible has not been around long, meaning it has a smaller user community and the least materials available on the web.Simple but powerful automation toolAnsible offers a solid solution for configuration management and automation. It works agentless and provides playbooks that are easy to read and edit. More so, it uses a popular programming language that is familiar to engineers. While it lacks some advanced features that its mature competitor has, it can still be a great option if you are looking for an alternative tool for your IT needs.

AWS CodePipeline is a fully managed continuous delivery service that helps you automate your release pipelines for fast and reliable application and infrastructure updates. CodePipeline automates the build, test, and deploy phases of your release process every time there is a code change, based on the release model you define. This enables you to rapidly and reliably deliver features and updates.

AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. With Config, you can review changes in configurations and relationships between AWS resources, dive into detailed resource configuration histories, and determine your overall compliance against the configurations specified in your internal guidelines. This enables you to simplify compliance auditing, security analysis, change management, and operational troubleshooting.

AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that provides managed instances of Chef and Puppet. Chef and Puppet are automation platforms that allow you to use code to automate the configurations of your servers. OpsWorks lets you use Chef and Puppet to automate how servers are configured, deployed, and managed across your Amazon EC2 instances or on-premises compute environments.