Self-Configuring Virtual Machine Environments Using Ansible Pull: A Review of Approaches and Challenges

Abstract

The automation of virtual machine (VM) configuration has become an integral part of modern IT infrastructure, ensuring compliance with the high demands of scalability, reliability, and security. With the increasing adoption of cloud technologies, there is a growing need for standardized approaches to infrastructure management that eliminate the limitations of traditional methods, such as manual configuration or individual scripts. The goal of this research is to design an architecture for automated VM self-configuration based on Ansible Pull in combination with tools like Terraform, Hashicorp Vault, and Git to ensure flexibility, autonomy, and security.

To build the system, an analytical approach was used to evaluate existing configuration tools, model the architecture using Git repositories, Terraform, and Vault, and experimentally implement cloud-init to initialize Ansible Pull at the VM level. The proposed architecture automates the VM configuration process, ensuring scalability and reducing dependence on centralized management servers. The implementation of Ansible Pull with a tagging system provides idempotent task execution, regular updates, and maintenance of the desired system state.

It has been proven that combining Ansible Pull with Terraform, Git, and Vault ensures simplicity of implementation, flexibility in scaling, and secure configuration management. The proposed approach is effective for dynamic environments requiring frequent updates and aligns with modern DevOps practices.