TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU: Manage Windows like Linux with Ansible

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is the movie "10 Things I Hate About You". If you're not familiar with it, it's a 90's teenybopper flick that's loosely based on Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew". In the movie, our hero Patrick is surreptitiously paid to woo the man-hating Kat so that slimy Joey will be allowed to date her younger sister Bianca. Kat initially can't stand Patrick and his numerous bad habits, but by the end of the story has fallen for him. She reads him a poem that starts off describing ten things she hates about him, but wraps it up declaring her love for him instead.

I love Windows, but I know many Linux admins can't stand it, and avoid working with it at any cost. While working on a talk to espouse the use of Ansible to manage Windows in the same way as Linux, I imagined a Linux admin discovering the power of Ansible's features and common language to see the beauty in an automated Windows setup. It inspired me to write my own version of Kat's poem:

I hate that you're not SSH, and the shell that you call "Power",
I hate Continue reading

Ansible + Windows Webinar Q&A

The Ansible Ask an Expert webinar series continues to be one of the most popular series we’ve ever hosted. During these Q&A style webinars, our Ansible experts take questions from the audience about specific topics.

In April, we covered Ask an Expert: Windows. We’ve compiled the questions and answers below for your reference.

Interested in more? Our next Ask an Expert: Windows webinar is scheduled for August 10th at 2PM EDT. Register here.

Q: Any update on support for Windows machine as the control machine? This would make a lot of sense for Windows-only administrators who don't use Linux all the time.

A: There are several technical limitations that prevent the Ansible controller from running as a native Win32 application. However, Ansible does work under the new Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows 10. While we don't officially support it for production workloads (nor does Microsoft), it does work quite well for developing and testing Ansible content.

Q: Is it possible to manage MySQL under Windows with Ansible?

A: Yes, the MySQL modules can manage Windows-hosted MySQL the same way as Linux-hosted MySQL. The modules themselves still need to actually run on a Linux/Mac host, but they're usually run from Continue reading

How Ansible Makes Automating Windows Easier

In case you missed it, Ansible 2.0’s Windows support includes a number of improvements and new features that make automating Windows with Ansible easier. Because of Red Hat’s commitment to solid cross-platform management, you’ll also see an acceleration of these kinds of improvements in future Ansible releases. I’ll highlight a few of the items I’m most excited about from 2.0, and give a quick peek at what’s scheduled for future releases.

Windows Update Support

Update management is a common pain point for Windows administrators. The new win_updates module makes it easy to orchestrate updates during your maintenance windows- no more logging into individual machines to kick off updates or hoping a scheduled update pass actually ran!

IIS Modules

2.0 shipped with a suite of modules for managing IIS. From configuring websites, AppPools, virtual directories, and more- now Ansible can deploy and manage your IIS apps with ease.

Performance Enhancements to File Copy

Since WinRM doesn’t have a built-in file transfer mechanism, Ansible has to jump through some “interesting” hoops to deploy its module code and copy files from the control host to a managed Windows box. Historically, this process was very slow, and could only transfer small Continue reading

Easily provision Windows instances in AWS with Ansible

MYTH: using Ansible to do fully-automated provisioning of Windows instances in AWS is difficult, because WinRM is not enabled by default on Amazon’s Windows AMIs, and the admin password is not known at startup.