Among the many configuration management tools available Ansible has some distinct advantages-it's minimal in nature you don't need to install anything on your nodes & it has an easy learning curve With this updated second edition you'll learn how to be productive with this tool quickly whether you're a developer deploying code to production or a system administrator looking for a better automation solution Authors Lorin Hochstein & Rene Moser show you how to write playbooks (Ansible's configuration management scripts) manage remote servers & explore the tool's real power built-in declarative modules You'll discover that Ansible has the functionality you need-and the simplicity you desire Manage Windows machines & automate network device configuration Manage your fleet from your web browser with Ansible Tower Understand how Ansible differs from other configuration management systems Use the YAML file format to write your own playbooks Work with a complete example to deploy a non-trivial application Deploy applications to Amazon EC2 & other cloud platforms Create Docker images & deploy Docker containers with Ansible This book is best read start to finish with later chapters building on earlier ones Because it's written in a tutorial style you can follow along on your own machine Most examples focus on web applications