Managing configuration across an enterprise Linux estate is filled with pitfalls and the potential for configuration drift. This can be caused by people with good intentions, even in break-fix scenarios where changes have to be made in a hurry. However, it can also be caused by those with malicious intent, seeking to circumvent security requirements. Good use of Ansible, especially templating, enables the construction of easy-to-read, concise playbooks that make it easy to ensure configuration management is reliable, repeatable, auditable, and version-controlled—all the basic tenets we set out earlier in this book for good enterprise automation practice.

In this chapter, you gained practical experience in extending a Linux machine with new software packages. You then learned how to apply simple, static configuration changes to those packages, and the potential pitfalls associated with this. Finally, you learned best practices for managing configuration across an enterprise using Ansible. In the next chapter, we proceed to look at internal repository management with Pulp.