I was talking to my friend about Ansible automation and how we are implementing automated solutions for cloud and on-premise infrastructure. Then he told me that, his team is looking for such tools to automate their Windows servers and Desktops. When I suggested Ansible, he didnโt believe me as he thought Ansible cannot do anything with Windows machines !
Oh.. then I realized that there are some misunderstanding about Ansible and itโs supported platforms as most of them thought Ansible is only available for Linux (or Unix); yes that is true (Ansible is not natively available for Windows yet) but you know, you can use Ansible to manage your Windows machines as well (and network devices, firewall devices, cloud, containers and more).
Do you know, you have more than 100 Windows modules already available to use from Ansible Community.
This is a collection of articles and references about Windows automation using Ansible, published in techbeatly and other platforms.
Unlike SSH for Linux machines, Ansible uses Windows PowerShell remoting to automate Windows. Ansible uses the WinRM (Windows Remote Management) protocol which is Microsoftโs built-in HTTP-based remote management technology.
The following matrix is a high level overview of the authentication options:
Option | Local Accounts | Active Directory Accounts | Credential Delegation | HTTP Encryption |
---|---|---|---|---|
Basic | Yes | No | No | No |
Certificate | Yes | No | No | No |
Kerberos | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
NTLM | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
CredSSP | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Refer to Windows Remote Management to learn more.
The first step is to configure your Windows machine to be managed by Ansible. Follow below guides to configure the Windows system with and without SSL methods.
(In progress, please share your Windows use cases via email : [email protected])
Do you want to learn more about Ansible practical use cases? Check the latest book from the author as follows. Available on Packt and Amazon.
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Gineesh Madapparambath
Gineesh Madapparambath is the founder of techbeatly and he is the author of the book - ๐๐ป๐๐ถ๐ฏ๐น๐ฒ ๐ณ๐ผ๐ฟ ๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐น-๐๐ถ๐ณ๐ฒ ๐๐๐๐ผ๐บ๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป.
He has worked as a Systems Engineer, Automation Specialist, and content author. His primary focus is on Ansible Automation, Containerisation (OpenShift & Kubernetes), and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).
(aka Gini Gangadharan - iamgini.com)
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