Ansible for DevOps
by Jeff Geerling · first published 2015
18mentions
6recommended by
12HN commenters
2014–2026first – last mentioned
50% recommend42% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
Practical, hands-on introduction to Ansible for automating server configuration. Well suited to engineers adopting Ansible at work, and a way to learn the tool from the ground up.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Server and configuration management for humans
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I like Jeff Geerling's books, - Ansible for DevOps - Ansible for Kubernetes And something still computer related, but not as much tech related, The Cuckoo's Egg.
on “Ask HN: What are your top 5 favorite computer books?” ↗Jeff Geerling's classic, "Ansible for DevOps", since naturally you'll be configuring PF on lots of servers. [1] https://leanpub.com/ansible-for-devops
on “The Book of PF, 4th edition” ↗…This is an often cited classic with a lot of precious concepts explained in detail. It can be read for free online. But this is an opportunity to reward them for it. (Yes, I do own a purchased copy). Ansible for DevOps by Jeff Geerling. Already mentioned by the sibling commenter. There a lot more on my wishlist. All of them are competitively priced at 10 to 15$ each.
on “The Book of PF, 4th edition” ↗I really appreciate Jeff's "Ansible for DevOps". It's what got me going in using Ansible. I didn't even finish the book (due to lack of time) or know all the features in the book but I appreciate knowing Ansible whenever I use it. And his book is…
on “I gave away my books and sales increased” ↗Hey Jeff, this is awesome. Ansible for DevOps was my bible for a long time - I wasn’t aware the k8s book was even in the works! I’ll definitely be taking you up on that.
on “Ansible 101 by Jeff Geerling – new series on YouTube” ↗Jeff is awesome! I met him at AnsibleFest 2022, and he was very friendly despite not feeling well (I did not take up much of his time when I realized that, FYI). Nobody even mentioned his books! His Ansible for DevOps book I have used at 2 companies to teach Ansible. He's an amazing guy and our industry is better off for having him in it.
on “Jeff Geerling” ↗…provisioning process. And finally, many of the books and tutorials I've read use Vagrant, so it's much easier to follow along if you have Vagrant installed. For example I was recently reading the book Ansible for Devops by Jeff Geerling, and Vagrant and Virtualbox were used pretty extensively throughout the book. Also, if you decide to package VMs to use in production it's pretty easy to integrate with Packer, which…
on “Ask HN: What's your experience with working M1 and M2 Macs?” ↗Out of curiosity, has (the print version of) Ansible for DevOps been updated since it was first published? I purchased the dead-tree version probably three or four years ago and, unfortunately, it was basically already outdated by that time. I learned a bit from…
on “I gave away my books and sales increased” ↗I recently came across a site called Leanpub [https://leanpub.com/] while searching for Jeff Geerling's ebook on 'Ansible for Devops'. The company looks to be ethical, and is aimed at Technical authors who wish to self publish ebooks. Each ebook sold displays how much the author will receive from the purchase (usually 80%). Most…
on “Quick and dirty way to rip an eBook from Android” ↗…automating both of the above SaaS products—and now the book generates more monthly revenue than both of the above :) I've written extensively about all three projects, but continue to devote more time to the Ansible for DevOps book / project. Here are some posts with history/reflection on self-publishing: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/search/self-publishing
on “Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell” ↗…have always wanted to learn DevOps. I use Heroku for almost all my apps, but I wanted to learn what is happening every time I do git push heroku master. I started learning Ansible recently using the 'Ansible for Devops' book. I used the concepts mentioned in this book and used the author's Ansible roles as a starting point to create a playbook for deploying Rails 6 apps. Here's the code - https://github.com/EmailThis/ansible-rails…
on “Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project?” ↗…likely put you in top 1% richest in my country. My case is an extreme corner case, but my yearly expense is around $1500-$1800 (which looks likely to be earned with my ebooks this year). >You can buy Ansible for DevOps, 2nd Edition on Amazon, LeanPub, or iBooks. Any reason you aren't using https://gumroad.com/ as well? That is much better than leanpub with fees being * 5% + charge fee (3.5% + 30¢) * or, 3.5% + 30¢…
on “Self-publishing and the 2nd edition of Ansible for DevOps” ↗I just clicked the big 'Publish' button on LeanPub, and version 0.3 of my first book, Ansible for DevOps, is now available for sale. It's been an interesting experience so far, and without a service like LeanPub, I would've never pulled the trigger. I loved hearing others' self-publishing experiences here…
on “Show HN: I'm self-publishing my first book on LeanPub” ↗I figured I'd post this on the blog in addition to Ansible for DevOps[1], since I spent a bit of time researching the history of remote administration in preparation for a chapter on security and Ansible. Especially in light of the Heartbleed incident, I think it's a good…
on “A brief history of SSH and remote access” ↗…much mention of LeanPub here; in addition to GitBook, it has what I would consider a decent modern publishing toolchain that gets out of the way for most types of writing. I've been writing/publishing Ansible for DevOps over the past year now, and LeanPub is the ideal platform for me to both write/author the book (though I just edit Markdown in Sublime and sync through Dropbox—you can use GitHub if you'd like as well)…
on “GitBook: A modern publishing toolchain” ↗