Use Ansible when available
When running discovery, we can utilize tools already available on the system. One of these tools that will be useful is Ansible [1].
We can run a check for the presence of Ansible and execute it on servers in question if we have credentials available. (example run [2])
The benefits of Ansible:
- It's written in Python so it's native (no shell-out)
- It has system info (facts) already built in with the `setup` module [3]
- It will run ohai and facter on the system to be discovered if already installed [4]
- We can create our own modules that live with the code or provide an option to look at a custom path
Negatives:
- Each module has to be called individually (I'm trying to figure out how to "run all")
- Potentially "heavy" in terms of installation and execution (negated by not directly requiring)
[1] - http://
[2] - https:/
[3] - http://
[4] - https:/