How to implement regular Ansible runs?

Archives Ansible Project
1

Hi,

we plan to deploy Linux client configurations via Ansible. Since not all clients are running all the time, we want Ansible to run the deployment in regular invervals, e.g. every 2-3 hours. What is “the Ansible way” to implement this? Is there a better way than to have a cronjob on the Ansible server, which runs the appropriate playbook (or playbooks) in regular intervals? Is there some kind of “pull” mechanism supported by Ansible, so that the /clients/ can initiate Ansible runs? I couldn’t find anything in the documentation, but then I wasn’t even sure what keywords I should look for :wink:

And no: Ansible Tower is not an option. We can’t afford it.

I appreciate any pointers
Frank

2

Cron can work fine, ansible-pull can run from the client machines
(also from cron), if you want an app server Ansible Tower
(http://ansible.com/tower) * disclaimer, this pays my salary or any
other job execution server with scheduling should work.

3

Thanks. Will have a look at ansible-pull. That seems to exactly do what we need.

frank