Hi there, I apologize if this is the wrong place for this question.
I am looking for any manage service providers or computer repair shops using Ansible. I would like to know how you use it, and possibly get some pointers in how I can do the same.
My name is JP, I have been running a small one-man-shop for about 20 years now, and I have recently (little over a year) been trying to apply DevOps principles to my business. I do volunteer work for a large non-profit in the Orchestrated Operations department, and have been using tools like Chef and Ansible, but only from the standpoint of an engineer working on small changes to a big infrastructure already existing. I have been trying to make better use of open-source tools to support windows desktops, of which I manage 400 or so, and am frequently disappointed with the commercial tools available to my business type. I am hoping to find a fit for Ansible for managing these desktops and server, but they are spread out over a couple dozen sites, and I don't even know if it is possible to manage them from a single location with Ansible, or what that would even look like. So any hints would be much appreciated.
You can definitely do this with Ansible, I do something very similar with a smaller set of disparate sites.
Break things down with different inventory files per site, or, use a single inventory with a group for each site.
Definitely make heavy use of the ‘check’ and ‘diff’ flags before you actually run things. (These are options in Job Templates config) or just CLI flags if you’re not using tower, I.e. Ansible from the CLI. They are invaluable and will show you any differences your play WOULD have made, with a diff style output based on what’s on the target.
Hope that helps? 
Just knowing it is possible is a huge help! There is practically nothing in Google searches for my scenario, everyone wants to sell me the latest MSP/RMM snake oil 
, I felt like I was blazing trail.
One challenge I have is that I rarely have connectivity into the networks from the outside, I have been relying on tools making outbound connections, like AutoTask, Kaseya, Atera. Is this something you have had to deal with? If so, how did you overcome it?
I haven’t had that situation with Windows… with Linux I would rely on this: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/cli/ansible-pull.html
Maybe someone else can chime in, but you might be better off using the Ansible mailing list as opposed to AWX, or try the various Ansible related IRC channels on freenode
Sorry I couldn’t be of more help!
After sending this, you might try running Ansible Pull from docker on Windows, that might do what you’re after
One last ask, can you tighten me up with a suggestion of an active, noob friendly, Ansible forum that my question might be more appropriate for?