Ansible Infrastructure Automation

Problem

• Manual server provisioning caused configuration drift and inconsistent setups between machines.
• New servers required repeated, error-prone steps (packages, directories, tools, Docker config).

Solution

• Created Ansible playbooks to standardize provisioning: users, directory structure, required tooling, and Docker-related setup.
• Made new server bring-up a repeatable process instead of a checklist.

How it’s used

• Run when standing up new servers to ensure a known baseline before apps are deployed.
• Works across cloud and on-prem environments.

Decisions & tradeoffs

• Optimized for consistency and repeatability over one-off tweaks.
• Kept the playbooks focused on baseline provisioning so application deployments stay clean and predictable.

Flow

New server → Ansible
│
├─ OS baseline + packages
├─ Users + SSH + permissions
├─ Directory layout
├─ Docker install + config
└─ Ready for app deploy