What do you like best about the product?

Ansible is a very flexible framework wherein you can run ansible commands manually (like attached in the screenshot) to check or change configuration on single/multiple nodes from the node where ansible is installed or ansible node. You can also make several ".yml" playbooks that you can run instead on running ansible commands manually. Creating playbooks is easy and one can learn how to create stages of playbook within a week. For eg, i have been given a task to remove nodes from hdp to cdp cluster and since cdp cluster has different kerberos principals, i had made a playbook that finds the ols hdp kerberos principals and delete them post which I can add the nodes in my cdp cluster.

What do you dislike about the product?

Ansible is very powerful hence you need to use it with caution. The more number of nodes in the inventory list, the bigger the risk is. So make sure to double check your ansible command if you are running it on a big inventory. We have clusters wherein sometimes we need to make changes to 100+ nodes at a time.Now we use ansible to make changes but in case a wrong command is ran, it will run in all the 100 nodes and it can be disruptive.

Frankly there is nothing to dislike about ansible but yes you need to be careful as you probably will be using ansible to make changes to multiple nodes.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Ansible is solving multiple use cases for us. let me jot down the ones that i use frequently:
1. ansible playbook to delete kerberos principal from old hdp cluster
2.ansible playbook to do sanity on nodes such as to check status of selinux, java version , python version etc
3. Installation of Java, python ,anaconda , sssd , httpd, ntpd on new nodes
4. Enabling passwordless ssh between nodes
5.Deletion of /tmp data from nodes when the size reaches 85% in /tmp