# the transition from manual to ansible with version control

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/the-transition-from-manual-to-ansible-with-version-control/14572>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [February 15, 2014, 2:52pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/the-transition-from-manual-to-ansible-with-version-control/14572 "2014-02-15T14:52:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![networkserf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@networkserf](https://forum.ansible.com/u/networkserf)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2014, 2:52pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/the-transition-from-manual-to-ansible-with-version-control/14572/1 "2014-02-15T14:52:48Z")

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Hi

I’m looking for articles or suggestions on how to move my old-school enterprise to contemporary devops practices (starting with config management). I’ve been using ansible in my development environment for a couple of months and I’m in the process of migrating many manually-managed configs under version control.

I’m looking at best practices for this activity. Any articles or suggestions are greatly appreciated. Here’s the process I’m thinking of right now:

Step 1: Bring “low-hanging fruit” under (git) version control

- easy (non-critical) configs are centralized, versioned and distributed via ansible
- I’m thinking it might be good to put a comment in the newly versioned config for my colleagues who are still warming up to this approach  
e.g. # ansible-managed configuration - version (config version number)
- Is there a supported way to add config comments like this under ansible?

Step 2: Gradually migrate complex configs under version control

- need a method to gradually migrate configs (one-by-one) under ansible management
- must support quick rollback to the old config in case there are issues
- resisting ansible’s lineinfile module although it may be required in some cases
- I’m thinking I’ll move these configs under individual folders (one per server) and version them individually to start
- end state: should be able to --check and --diff these now under a playbook without any discrepancies

Step 3: Look for templating opportunities

- create a role for the newly managed config
- look for (jinja2) templating opportunities
- once a template has been tested, then remove individual (per-node) configs collected in step 2 and start using role-based template
- should still be able to preserve rollback via git and ansible

Step 4: Repeat 2 & 3 for all complex configs

I’m only at step 1 right now. Any thoughts on this process are much appreciated.

Thank you.