What is Ansible and How NASA Uses It for Automation

In today’s world of cloud, DevOps, and automation, Ansible has become one of the most popular tools for managing IT infrastructure. But Ansible isn’t just used by startups and enterprises—it’s also trusted by Nasa for its mission-critical operations. From automating servers to ensuring security compliance, Ansible plays a key role in helping NASA focus on innovation rather than repetitive manual tasks.

What is Ansible ?

Ansible is an open-source automation platform from Red Hat that simplifies IT tasks like configuration management, application deployment, and cloud provisioning using a simple, human-readable language called YAML to write playbooks. It is agentless, meaning no software needs to be installed on the systems it manages, connecting instead via SSH or other protocols.

Features & Benefits of Ansible

1. Simple & Human-Readable
Ansible uses YAML, which is easy to read and write even for non-programmers. This makes automation more accessible across IT teams. 

2. Agentless Architecture
No agents are required on target systems—Ansible connects over SSH or WinRM. This reduces setup complexity and ongoing maintenance. 

3. Scalable
Whether managing a few servers or thousands, Ansible scales seamlessly. It’s equally useful for startups and large enterprises. 

4. Cross-Platform
Ansible supports Linux, Windows, cloud platforms, and even networking devices. This flexibility makes it a one-stop automation solution. 

5. Idempotent
Playbooks deliver consistent results regardless of how many times they run. This ensures stable, predictable, and error-free environments.

What Ansible used for ?

• Infrastructure Automation – Ansible automates managing both cloud and on-premises infrastructure, making it easy to deploy resources at scale. This shifts IT teams’ focus from routine work to more strategic tasks.
• Configuration Management – Ansible keeps system settings consistent across environments, reducing drift and errors. This improves reliability and speeds up issue resolution.
• Application Deployment – Applications can be deployed on multiple servers with minimal downtime and errors. This makes updates smoother, especially in industries like e-commerce and retail.
• Security & Compliance Automation – Ansible enforces security rules and compliance automatically. Regular patching and access controls keep systems secure and protect sensitive data.
•  Continuous Delivery -Ansible automates the deployment pipeline by integrating with CI/CD tools like Jenkins and GitLab. It enables frequent, reliable application releases with minimal downtime, ensuring faster delivery of updates and features.
  

ANSIBLE CASE STUDY — A Real Life Usage by NASA

Business Challenge faced by NASA

NASA needed to move roughly 65 applications from a traditional hardware based data center to a cloud-based environment for better agility and cost savings. The rapid timeline resulted in many applications being migrated ‘as-is’ to a cloud environment.

Solution to this Challenge

The solution was to leverage Ansible Tower to manage and schedule the cloud environment.

How NASA is using Ansible

Ansible Tower is an enterprise framework to help you control, secure, and manage your Ansible automation at scale. Ansible Tower is a web-based interface for managing Ansible. Ansible Tower lets you launch playbooks with just a single click.

Before and After Using Ansible By NASA

While parts of the technical staff would sometimes use Ansible core for some tasks, previously NASA WESTPRIME was using shell scripts and manual SSH-based administration.

After testing, NASA decided that Ansible was the best fit for them, due to:

• Ansible does not require agents to be installed on hosts; native use of SSH
• The learning curve is very small and took less than a day to learn
• Non-technical staff can read an Ansible Playbook and know what’s happening