So far in this book, we have established a solid framework for our Enterprise Linux infrastructure, one that lends itself well to the large-scale deployments typical in an enterprise, and to automated management with Ansible at this scale. In this chapter, we now proceed to go into depth on the automated management aspect of this infrastructure, starting with the installation and configuration of software packages.

In just about every enterprise, one task is almost guaranteed to be required during the lifespan of a standardized Linux system—the installation and configuration of a service. This might simply involve the configuration of an existing system service, or possibly even the installation of the service itself, followed by post-configuration work. 

We will cover the following topics in this chapter, to explore Ansible configuration management in greater depth:

• Installing new software
• Making configuration changes with Ansible
• Managing configuration at an enterprise scale