SoCS hosts an Ansible server which is available at ansible.socs.uoguelph.ca. Ansible is an open-source software administration tool that allows for remote command execution and payload delivery on servers to automate menial administrative tasks. It is often used in conjunction with Terraform when creating new VMs.

At SoCS, Ansible is primarily used to routinely update VM packages and to help deploy new endpoints by installing required dependencies. It can also be used to deploy configuration files to remote servers as an alternative to scp. Ansible helps to minimize human error by standardizing server management and administrative tasks.

SoCS uses a very standard configuration of Ansible with roles to designate different functions such as apt updates and payload deployment. Roles are subsets of tasks that can be combined together into a singular playbook. Playbooks are executed on the remote server (or a group of servers in a host group). Host groups to make it easier to refer to multiple servers rather than manually type each one by creating a common name that refers to all of them.