Install Ansible on Windows

Learn to install Ansible on Windows using the Windows Subsystem for Linux feature.

We'll cover the following

Officially, Windows is not a supported operating system for the Ansible control node, even if Red Hat is working hard to eliminate barriers to native Windows controllers. The reason behind this is that there are a lot of UNIXisms deeply baked into most of Ansible that prevent it from working on native Windows. Windows doesn’t have the fork() syscall implementation. The Ansible controller worker model as of 2.11 makes heavy use of the POSIX fork() syscall. Some people use Cygwin POSIX-compatibility projects, but sometimes it just breaks, so it’s not a reliable solution.

WSL installation

The best way to use Ansible on Windows is to use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Two versions of WSL technology are available. Version 2 runs faster and better than version 1.

Get hands-on with 1200+ tech skills courses.