# Is Ansible Tower necessary?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-ansible-tower-necessary/22763>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [October 10, 2016, 5:55pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-ansible-tower-necessary/22763 "2016-10-10T17:55:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![michelleacrawley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb9ed0/32.png) [@michelleacrawley](https://forum.ansible.com/u/michelleacrawley)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2016, 5:55pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-ansible-tower-necessary/22763/1 "2016-10-10T17:55:09Z")

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I’m looking to use Ansible as an orchestrater in my small dev environment. The open source version of Ansible is very bare bones; I was wondering if it is necessary to purchase Ansible Tower to really make it work? Or is there full functionality with the open source version?

Thanks.

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**Author:** ![Dick\_Davies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Dick\_Davies](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dick_Davies)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2016, 11:21pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-ansible-tower-necessary/22763/2 "2016-10-10T23:21:48Z")

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When you say 'bare bones' I'm not sure what you mean - what features  
are you missing?

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**Author:** ![David\_Strebel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@David\_Strebel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/David_Strebel)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2016, 11:36pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-ansible-tower-necessary/22763/3 "2016-10-16T23:36:35Z")

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Tower provides some nice user admin, reporting, and configuration features. You have all the functionality with Open Source version… Is there specific features you’re looking for?

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**Author:** ![Kane\_Kennedy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Kane\_Kennedy](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Kane_Kennedy)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 5:19pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-ansible-tower-necessary/22763/4 "2016-10-17T17:19:22Z")

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Tower provides accountability and control over who did what and when. If you don’t need that then no you don’t need Tower to do anything that Ansible can do.

There is an open source front end, kind of a FOREMAN to review Ansible jobs but it isn’t the products core use and requires a bit of messing around to get working.

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**Author:** ![Josh\_Smift1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bcef8e/32.png) [@Josh\_Smift1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Josh_Smift1)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-ansible-tower-necessary/22763/5 "2016-10-17T17:26:46Z")

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Lots of people certainly use Ansible without Tower; it just depends what  
features you need.

There's also ostensibly going to be an open-source version of Tower at  
some point; [https://www.ansible.com/open-tower](https://www.ansible.com/open-tower) is light on details beyond  
"some day".

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