⚡ Quick Guide: pyinfra - Fast Python Infrastructure Automation & Configuration Management Tool

Name: pyinfra
Author: pyinfra

COLLECTED BY

Organization: Archive Team

Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.

History is littered with hundreds of conflicts over the future of a community, group, location or business that were "resolved" when one of the parties stepped ahead and destroyed what was there. With the original point of contention destroyed, the debates would fall to the wayside. Archive Team believes that by duplicated condemned data, the conversation and debate can continue, as well as the richness and insight gained by keeping the materials. Our projects have ranged in size from a single volunteer downloading the data to a small-but-critical site, to over 100 volunteers stepping forward to acquire terabytes of user-created data to save for future generations.

The main site for Archive Team is at archiveteam.org and contains up to the date information on various projects, manifestos, plans and walkthroughs.

This collection contains the output of many Archive Team projects, both ongoing and completed. Thanks to the generous providing of disk space by the Internet Archive, multi-terabyte datasets can be made available, as well as in use by the Wayback Machine, providing a path back to lost websites and work.

Our collection has grown to the point of having sub-collections for the type of data we acquire. If you are seeking to browse the contents of these collections, the Wayback Machine is the best first stop. Otherwise, you are free to dig into the stacks to see what you may find.

The Archive Team Panic Downloads are full pulldowns of currently extant websites, meant to serve as emergency backups for needed sites that are in danger of closing, or which will be missed dearly if suddenly lost due to hard drive crashes or server failures.

Collection: ArchiveBot: The Archive Team Crowdsourced Crawler

ArchiveBot is an IRC bot designed to automate the archival of smaller websites (e.g. up to a few hundred thousand URLs). You give it a URL to start at, and it grabs all content under that URL, records it in a WARC, and then uploads that WARC to ArchiveTeam servers for eventual injection into the Internet Archive (or other archive sites).

To use ArchiveBot, drop by #archivebot on EFNet. To interact with ArchiveBot, you issue commands by typing it into the channel. Note you will need channel operator permissions in order to issue archiving jobs. The dashboard shows the sites being downloaded currently.

There is a dashboard running for the archivebot process at http://www.archivebot.com.

ArchiveBot's source code can be found at https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/ArchiveBot.

TIMESTAMPS

The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20260503194533/https://pyinfra.com/

pyinfra turns Python code into shell commands and runs them on your servers. Execute ad-hoc commands and write declarative operations. Target SSH servers, local machine and Docker containers. Fast and scales from one server to thousands.

Think ansible but Python instead of YAML, and up to 10x faster.

Why Choose pyinfra?

Super Fast Execution Deploy to thousands of targets with predictable performance. Up to 10x faster than Ansible.
Instant Debugging Get realtime output from shell commands with no abstraction layer for immediate troubleshooting.
Declarative Operations Only make changes when needed with built-in diff checking and idempotent operations.
Fully Extendable Leverage the entire Python package ecosystem. Write inventory and operations in pure Python.
Agentless Architecture Deploy to any system with POSIX shell access. Zero dependencies on target systems.
Seamless Integration Pull inventory from Terraform, execute against Docker containers, integrate with your DevOps toolchain.

Getting Started Examples Repo

See It In Action

Write infrastructure automation in pure Python. No YAML, no DSL, just Python code.

                        deploy.py
                    
# Install and configure nginx
from pyinfra.operations import apt, systemd

apt.packages(
    name="Install nginx",
    packages=["nginx"],
)


systemd.service(
    name="Restart and enable the nginx service",
    service="nginx.service",
    running=True,
    restarted=True,
    enabled=True,
)

                    Simple, Powerful, Pythonic
                    No new syntax to learn If you know Python, you know pyinfra.
Full Python capabilities Use loops, conditions, functions, and any Python library.
Type hints & IDE support Get autocomplete and inline documentation.
Instant feedback See exactly what commands run on your servers in real-time.

                

Join the Community

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Get Support

Join our active Matrix chat for help, discussions, and to connect with other pyinfra users and contributors.

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📚

Read the Docs

Comprehensive documentation with guides, API references, and examples to help you get started and master pyinfra.

View Docs →

🤝

Contribute

pyinfra is open source and welcomes contributions. Report bugs, suggest features, or contribute code on GitHub.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is pyinfra production-ready?

Yes! pyinfra is battle-tested and used by companies worldwide to manage production infrastructure. It has a stable API and comprehensive test coverage.

Can I migrate from Ansible?

Absolutely. Many teams have successfully migrated from Ansible to pyinfra. The concepts are similar, but the Python-based approach offers more flexibility and better performance.

Does it work with Windows?

pyinfra targets POSIX-compatible systems. While you can run pyinfra from Windows (via WSL), target systems should be Linux, macOS, or Unix-based systems.

How does it handle secrets?

pyinfra integrates with popular secret management tools. You can use environment variables, encrypted files, or integrate with HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, etc.

Can I use existing Python packages?

Yes! That's one of pyinfra's biggest advantages. You can import and use any Python package in your deployment scripts, from requests to boto3 to custom libraries.

What's the performance overhead?

Minimal. pyinfra uses efficient SSH multiplexing and parallel execution. It can manage thousands of servers simultaneously with low resource usage and predictable performance.