Question 1

What's the difference between Ansible and Terraform?

Accepted Answer

Terraform is mainly for provisioning infrastructure (creating cloud resources like VPCs, subnets, and VMs) using a desired-state model. Ansible is mainly for configuring and managing systems and applications (installing packages, editing config files, deploying apps) and can also provision some infrastructure. In practice, teams often use Terraform to create infrastructure and Ansible to configure what runs on it.

Question 2

When should I use Ansible?

Accepted Answer

Use Ansible when you need repeatable automation across many machines: patching and updates, configuring OS and middleware, deploying applications, enforcing security baselines, or orchestrating multi-step operational tasks. It’s especially useful when you manage a mix of Linux/Windows, network devices, and multiple clouds, and you want automation that’s easy to read and doesn’t require agents on managed hosts.

Question 3

How much does Ansible cost?

Accepted Answer

The open-source Ansible (ansible-core and community collections) is free. Costs typically come from (1) Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform subscriptions (adds enterprise features like automation controller, RBAC, auditing, content management, and support), (2) infrastructure to run automation (control nodes, CI runners), and (3) engineering time to build and maintain playbooks, roles, and testing. Pricing varies by subscription tier, scale, and support needs.

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