Ansible on Windows - is it viable as a "poor man" solution to RMM?

Has anyone had success with using Ansible to manage Windows?

5 comments

I suppose a lot of things have changed and I'm just out of date, but doesn't absolutely work by configuring machines via SSH? How would that work on Windows. If you want to use CM for this wouldn't one with an agent (for example saltstack or chef) be more suitable?

If ansible does work on Windows, why not try it out and see if it does what you need? One of selling points if ansible over competition is that it doesn't require setting an infrastructure to use it, so testing would take much less effort.
- Ansible on Windows uses WinRM but believe it or not there is also SSH for windows. (I use it to admin a single machine.)
  
  In my basic tests (initial setup of an AD DC, just a lab environment), it does work through WinRM. What gave me a headache is tying to enable "secure" (TLS) WinrRM using a self-signed certificate. I should do some cleanup and post the setup someday.
I am using it to manage ~20 servers. some IIS, some file/share ACLs, and i could not imagine configureing scheduled tasks any other way. In my experience, setting up the TLS for wsman is the biggest hassle. I have just toyed around with the openssh auth, never got it working in production. I am hoping ms moves in that direction and away from wsman