Ansible is a Configuration Management and Remote Execution whatever…, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible_%28software%29.

• SSH
• Python

There is no need for an always running daemon in Ansible (like in Saltstack). SSH and Python are already installad on most servers.

• http://ansibleworks.com/docs/

• http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_best_practices.html

• http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_tags.html

• https://github.com/ansible/ansible-examples

• http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks.html

• http://docs.ansible.com/modules_by_category.html

Especially: http://docs.ansible.com/synchronize_module.html

• http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_roles.html

• https://gist.github.com/phred/2897937
• https://github.com/ansible/ansible-examples
• Some roles: https://github.com/hnakamur/ansible-playbooks/tree/master/roles

• Colons (:) have a special meaning in the YAML syntax and cannot be used without modification; if you need them, you must add quotes around them, see [https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/1341 here].
• To be able to enable/disable services on a Debian system, the package chkconfig must be installed.
• Switch to another user per task: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21344777/how-to-switch-a-user-per-task-or-set-of-tasks
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22522985/how-can-i-write-variables-inside-the-tasks-file-in-ansible