This article was originally published on AI Study Room . For the full version with working code examples and related articles, visit the original post. Ansible Automation: Playbooks, Roles, Inventory, and Vault Ansible Automation: Playbooks, Roles, Inventory, and Vault Introduction Ansible has become one of the most widely adopted configuration management and automation tools in the DevOps ecosystem. Acquired by Red Hat in 2015, it stands out for its agentless architecture, YAML-based syntax, and push-based execution model. Unlike Puppet or Chef, which require agents installed on managed nodes, Ansible communicates over SSH or WinRM, making it trivial to get started with existing infrastructure. This article provides a technical deep dive into Ansible's core components: playbooks, roles, inventory management, Ansible Vault, idempotency, and a comparison with Terraform for infrastructure provisioning. Playbooks: The Heart of Automation Ansible Playbooks are YAML files that define automation workflows.…