Overview

Automation with Ansible I (DO407) is designed for system administrators who are intending to use Ansible for automation, configuration, and management. Learn how to install and configure Ansible, create and run playbooks to configure systems, and learn to manage inventories.

This course is based on Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 7.3 and Ansible 2.3.

Through hands-on labs, students will learn to automate system administration tasks on managed hosts with Ansible, learn how to write Ansible playbooks to standardize task execution, centrally manage playbooks and schedule recurring execution through a web interface with Red Hat® Ansible Tower. Students will also learn to manage encryption for Ansible with Ansible Vault, deploy Ansible Tower and use it to manage systems, and use Ansible in a DevOps environment with Vagrant.

Course content summary

• Install and troubleshoot Ansible on central nodes and managed hosts
• Use Ansible to run ad-hoc commands and playbooks to automate tasks
• Write effective Ansible playbooks
• Protect encrypted data needed for tasks with Ansible Vault
• Use Ansible Tower to more easily manage enterprise Ansible deployments
• Work with Ansible in conjunction with Vagrant in a DevOps environment

Duration

 4 days

Outcomes

1.      Impact on the organization

This course is intended to develop the skills needed to implement Ansible in an operations or cloud computing environment. These skills are suitable for organizations seeking to gain cost savings and operational efficiency by implementing the DevOps methodology with Ansible.

2.      Impact of this training

As a result of attending this course, students should be able to implement Ansible for the purpose of automation, configuration, and management in a DevOps environment.

Students should be able to demonstrate the following skills:

• Use Ansible to automate system administration tasks on managed hosts.
• Write Ansible Playbooks to standardize task executions.
• Manage playbook execution centrally, using Ansible Tower.

Prerequisites

Have a Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) certification or equivalent experience.

Audience

System and cloud administrators who need to automate cloud provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, and other IT needs.

Course Outline          

1.      Course introduction

• Introduce and review the course.

2.      Introduce Ansible

• Describe the terminology and architecture of Ansible.

3.      Deploy Ansible

• Install Ansible and run ad hoc commands.

4.      Implement playbooks

• Write Ansible plays and execute a playbook.

5.      Manage variables and inclusions

• Describe variable scope and precedence, manage variables and facts in a play, and manage inclusions.

6.      Implement task control

• Manage task control, handlers, and tags in Ansible playbooks.

7.      Implement Jinja2 templates

• Implement a Jinja2 template.

8.      Implement roles

• Create and manage roles.

9.      Configure complex playbooks

• Configure connection types, delegations, and parallelism.

10.  Implement Ansible Vault

• Manage encryption with Ansible Vault.

11.  Troubleshoot Ansible

• Troubleshoot the Ansible control machine and managed nodes.

12.  Implement Ansible Tower

• Implement Ansible Tower.

13.  Implement Ansible in a DevOps environment

• Implement Ansible in a DevOps environment using Vagrant.

14.  Comprehensive review

• Review tasks from the Automation with Ansible course.