Ansible: Self-Hosted IT Automation Platform

Ansible is the industry-standard open-source automation engine for IT infrastructure. With over 67,000 GitHub stars, it is the most widely used configuration management and orchestration tool in the world. Developed by Red Hat, Ansible uses simple YAML-based playbooks to automate server provisioning, application deployment, network configuration, and multi-tier orchestration — all without installing agents on target machines.

Self-hosting Ansible (and its web interface, AWX or Ansible Semaphore) gives your team a central automation control plane with full visibility into your infrastructure operations.

Key Features

• Agentless architecture — connects over SSH with no software required on managed nodes
• YAML-based playbooks that are human-readable and version-controllable
• 5,000+ community modules for managing cloud providers, databases, networking, containers, and more
• Idempotent execution — running a playbook twice produces the same result with no side effects
• Inventory management for organizing and grouping thousands of hosts
• Ansible Vault for encrypting sensitive variables like passwords and API keys
• Roles and Galaxy collections for reusable, shareable automation components
• AWX/Semaphore web UI for scheduled runs, RBAC, and audit logging

Why Self-Host Ansible?

Centralized automation control. Running Ansible from a dedicated VPS gives you a single point of control for all your infrastructure automation. Schedule playbook runs, track execution history, and manage inventories from a web interface instead of running commands ad-hoc from laptops.

Secure credential management. Self-hosting your Ansible control node means SSH keys, API tokens, and passwords stay on your infrastructure. Ansible Vault encrypts secrets at rest, and a self-hosted AWX instance provides RBAC so team members only access the credentials they need.

Audit trail and compliance. A self-hosted AWX or Semaphore gives you a complete audit log of every automation run — who triggered it, what changed, and whether it succeeded. Essential for regulated environments and change management processes.

No vendor dependency. While Ansible Automation Platform is Red Hat's commercial offering, the open-source Ansible engine and AWX web interface are fully free. Self-hosting means no subscription costs and no vendor lock-in.

System Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	2 vCPUs	4 vCPUs
RAM	4 GB	8 GB
Storage	20 GB SSD	40 GB SSD
OS	Ubuntu 22.04+	Ubuntu 24.04

The Ansible CLI itself is lightweight. These requirements are for running AWX (the web UI) with its PostgreSQL database and Redis cache. If you only need the CLI, a 1 vCPU / 1 GB RAM machine is sufficient.

Getting Started

Deploy Ansible with the AWX web interface on your VPS using Docker Compose through Dokploy. Our guide covers the full setup including PostgreSQL, task workers, credential management, and SSL configuration.

Deploy Ansible with Dokploy →

Alternatives

• n8n — Visual workflow automation for connecting APIs and services
• Terraform — Infrastructure as Code tool focused on cloud resource provisioning
• Puppet — Configuration management with a declarative language and agent-based model
• SaltStack — Event-driven automation and configuration management at scale

FAQ

What is the difference between Ansible and AWX? Ansible is the command-line automation engine that runs playbooks. AWX is the open-source web interface for Ansible that adds job scheduling, a visual inventory manager, role-based access control, and an execution audit trail. AWX is the upstream project of Red Hat's Ansible Automation Platform.

Does Ansible require agents on managed servers? No. Ansible is agentless — it connects to managed nodes over SSH (Linux) or WinRM (Windows) and executes tasks remotely. This means you don't need to install or maintain any software on the servers you manage.

Can Ansible manage cloud infrastructure? Yes. Ansible includes modules for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, and many other cloud providers. You can provision cloud resources, configure them, and deploy applications all from the same playbook.

Is Ansible suitable for small teams? Absolutely. Ansible's YAML playbooks are easy to learn and maintain. Even a single sysadmin benefits from codifying server configurations into repeatable playbooks instead of running ad-hoc commands.

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App data sourced from selfh.st open-source directory.