Best client platform to run Ansible from?

Archives Ansible Project
1

Hi,

I asked this in the github issue tracker, but the mailing list is a more appropriate place. I have a 2k+ server farm, with a mix of operating systems, and the problems associated with large installs. (Some hosts won’t ping, some don’t respond well to ssh, etc…)

What client platforms do people run Ansible from to have the best success rate at kicking off jobs against the entire pool of servers? I’m running Mac OS X, but at times, the ssh version was not the latest.

Thanks!

2

CentOS 7 VM works great for me, centos6 SSH was noticeably slower
(though TBH yosemite seems to work great too if you're already on the mac).

3

If you are having SSH problems (really network problems), I've noticed
a big improvement when I run ansible from within the cluster that it's
managing. It's trickier if your server farm is spread out across
multiple DCs/clouds. But it's still more reliable than running it from
your laptop on a different network.

4

Hi,

I asked this in the github issue tracker, but the mailing list is a more
appropriate place. I have a 2k+ server farm, with a mix of operating
systems, and the problems associated with large installs. (Some hosts won't
ping, some don't respond well to ssh, etc..)

What client platforms do people run Ansible from to have the best success
rate at kicking off jobs against the entire pool of servers? I'm running
Mac OS X, but at times, the ssh version was not the latest.

Thanks!

I suspect that the answers you get to this question will be largely
subjective based on different people's distro/OS preferences. That
being said, I've been very happy with RHEL7, CentOS 7, and Fedora 21
as the "controller" machine. However, I'm sure OpenSUSE, Arch, debian,
Ubuntu, FreeBSD and many others would be fine candidates as well.

I think a distro with python 2.7.x and the latest version of OpenSSH
client would be good candidates. Also, a possible indication of what
works well might be what OS/Distros that Ansible Tower is supported
on.

-AdamM

5

I currently use Gentoo and Archlinux, but have used it with ubuntu,
debian, FreeBSD and Windows/Cygwin, this last one mostly while i was
installing linux on another machine and integrating it to 'coporate
infrastructures'.

6

​+1

Especially avoid older OpenSSH that don't support ControlMaster​