DevOps practices, traditionally used for application build and deployment, have expanded to include infrastructure management and configuration automation, aided by tools like Ansible. Ansible, an agentless automation tool, utilizes YAML-based playbooks to manage infrastructure and application configurations through SSH connections, integrating with cloud providers to ensure consistent and idempotent operations. The text explores using Ansible in DevOps for secrets management, dynamic inventory, and SSH access, highlighting its benefits such as streamlined workflows, reduced manual errors, and enhanced release consistency. The document details a process for automating Ansible playbooks with GitHub Actions, emphasizing the separation of infrastructure provisioning and configuration management tasks for better workflow alignment. It concludes by suggesting Spacelift as a superior tool for managing Ansible playbooks, offering features like inventory observability, playbook run insights, and policies to enhance automation processes, asserting that while the guide offers a foundational approach, real-world implementation requires additional security measures and error handling.