It handles configuration-management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, ad-hoc task-execution, and multinode orchestration – including trivializing things like zero downtime rolling updates with load balancers.

Design Principles

• Have a dead simple setup process and a minimal learning curve
• Manage machines very quickly and in parallel
• Avoid custom-agents and additional open ports, be agentless by leveraging the existing SSH daemon
• Describe infrastructure in a language that is both machine and human friendly
• Focus on security and easy auditability/review/rewriting of content
• Manage new remote machines instantly, without bootstrapping any software
• Allow module development in any dynamic language, not just Python
• Be usable as non-root
• Be the easiest IT automation system to use, ever.

If you want to download a tarball of a release, go to releases.ansible.com, though most users use yum (using the EPEL instructions linked above), apt (using the PPA instructions linked above), or “pip install ansible”.