Automation is not a pile of scripts; it is what makes an environment reproducible and safe to change. I write about Ansible and its limits, about designing playbooks that survive team turnover, and about wiring automation into request handling processes.
A playbook written by one person works exactly as long as that person stays at the company. A few structural rules that let the next administrator understand it within an hour.
Ansible is a good tool for many things and a poor one for a few. A list of situations where it is the right choice, and where it is better left alone.
Creating an account, granting access, a new virtual machine: fifteen minutes of work and two days of waiting. How to connect the ticketing system to the automation platform so that the request fulfils itself.