DebOps is a free, open-source collection of Ansible roles and playbooks for automating secure, production-ready Debian and Ubuntu infrastructure.
Researched and fact-checked by Bartu Cavusoglu · Updated July 18, 2026
DebOps is a free, open-source collection of Ansible roles and playbooks for bootstrapping and managing Debian- or Ubuntu-based IT infrastructure, describing itself as 'your Debian-based data center in a box.' It was founded in October 2013 by Polish system administrator Maciej Delmanowski.
The project is released under the GPL-3.0-or-later license, mirroring the Debian project's strong free-software ethos, and is built entirely as a curated library on top of Ansible rather than a replacement for it.
DebOps ships more than 128 individually documented, independently usable Ansible roles covering SQL and NoSQL databases, web servers, DNS, mail systems, monitoring, and virtualization technologies like KVM/libvirt, Docker, and LXC.
Roles are built for heavy customization through Ansible inventory variables, and DebOps' 'project directories' concept lets one administrator manage multiple independent environments -- production, staging, personal -- from the same shared role library without configurations interfering with each other.
DebOps is entirely free and open-source with no commercial tier, company, or support contract behind it. It is installed via the debops Python package on PyPI combined with Ansible roles pulled from the project's GitHub repositories.
Support is community-driven through documentation at docs.debops.org and the project's GitHub organization rather than a paid vendor helpdesk.
Yes, DebOps is completely free and open-source under the GPL-3.0-or-later license.
DebOps is built entirely on top of Ansible, providing a curated library of more than 128 roles rather than replacing Ansible itself.
DebOps is designed specifically for Debian and Ubuntu Linux infrastructure.
DebOps was founded in October 2013 by Polish system administrator Maciej Delmanowski.
The debops command-line tool is distributed via PyPI (Python packaging) and works alongside Ansible roles pulled from the project's GitHub repositories.
They are self-contained folders that bundle their own Ansible inventory, playbooks, and roles, letting one team manage multiple environments independently from a shared role library.