Another key difference between Ansible and the other tools that it is commonly compared to is that the majority of these tools have their origins as systems that are designed to deploy and police a configuration state.
They typically require an agent to be installed on each host, that agent discovers some information about the host it is installed on, and then calls back to a central server basically saying Hi, I am server XYZ, could I please have my configuration? The server then decides what the configuration for the server looks like and sends it across to the agent, which then applies it. Typically, this exchange takes place every 15 to 30 minutes—this is great if you need to enforce a configuration ...
