Instructor-Led Automation Training

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Automation with Ansible

4 days 

This hands-on course presents the system management and configuration tool Ansible, from methods, techniques, capabilities to implementation. Each participant will learn how to configure an Ansible control machine along with the impact on the Linux system. Learning, writing, and applying playbook definitions are the key part of Ansible that allows the synchronization of environments easily and uniformly, to apply to Linux, Unix and Windows systems.                

What you will learn:

  • How to configure Ansible control-node and managed-node(s)
  • How to create and run playbooks
  • How to use standard Ansible modules
  • How to create and modify hosts (inventory) definitions
  • How to roles: create, install and access with the Ansible Galaxy
  • How to design a strategy for using Ansible capabilities

Course Outline

 Introduction

  • software development (cycle) considerations
  • strengths and weaknesses of Ansible
  • Ansible terminology
  • Ansible required environment setup

Initial Setup and Configuration

  • Ansible Core and Ansible Community installation
  • Ansible component locations
  • Ansible documentation
  • Ansible configuration file
  • inventory (hosts) file contents (Linux and Windows nodes)
  • (gathering) system facts (methods)
  • using system facts

Ansible Playbooks

  • layout of playbook sections:
    • directives, variable definitions, tasks, handlers, module modifiers
  • variable creation and usage
  • using modules in playbooks
  • controls: loops, conditionals, tags, notifications, plugins, filters, and lookups
  • running as root
  • encryption with the Ansible Vault

Ansible Modules

  • layout of an Ansible module
  • Linux modules: file, yum, systemd, cron, user, shell, filesystem
  • using the Windows specific (win_) modules
  • common Linux and Windows modules

Roles and Collections in Ansible

  • overview of a role / collection
  • creating a role / collection (structure)
  • using (a) role(s) / collection(s)
  • packaging up a role / collection
  • Ansible Galaxy - capabilities and usage with roles / collection
  • Git repo (role) repository / collection(creation)
  • local access of a Git repo role / collection repository
  • remote access of a Git repo role / collection repository

Managed Nodes

  • requirements for a Linux managed node
  • inventory and access control information on the control node
  • setup of a Linux managed node
  • requirements for a Windows managed node
  • setup of a Windows managed node

Ansible AWX / AAP / EDA

  • comparison of Ansible Tower and Ansible AWX
  • installation of Ansible AWX
  • using the Ansible AWX (dashboard)
  • define Ansible AWX user accounts
  • create inventories of systems (with credentials)
  • create projects and job templates
  • job scheduling (launch forms), status, and tracking
  • watching and chaining (multi-) playbooks (workflows)
  • controlling and viewing logs and audit trails
  • notifications
  • using the Ansible Tower API
  • browser based interface
  • tower-cli
  • tower_* Ansible modules

The Ansible Automation Platform (AAP)

Event Drive Ansible

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