Ansible Automation Course Content
Goal: Understand the "Push" model and set up your first managed nodes.
- Introduction to Ansible: Architecture (Control Node vs. Managed Nodes) and the "Agentless" advantage
- Environment Setup: Installing Ansible on Linux/WSL and configuring SSH key-based authentication
- Inventory Management:
- Static inventories (INI vs. YAML formats)
- Grouping hosts and parent-child relationships
- Ad-Hoc Commands: Executing quick tasks without playbooks (e.g., ansible all -m ping)
- YAML for Ansible: Mastering the syntax required for writing clear automation code
Goal: Move from single commands to repeatable "Infrastructure as Code."
- Playbook Structure: Understanding Plays, Tasks, and Modules
- Variables & Facts:
- Using ansible_facts to gather system information
- Variable precedence and scope (Global, Play, and Host levels)
- Task Control:
- Conditionals: Using when statements to run tasks only if certain criteria are met
- Loops: Using loop and with_items to repeat tasks efficiently
- Handlers: Triggering actions (like restarting a service) only when a change is detected
- Templates with Jinja2: Generating dynamic configuration files based on variables
Goal: Building scalable automation using professional structures.
- Roles: Organizing playbooks into a standardized directory structure (tasks/, vars/, templates/)
- Ansible Galaxy: Finding, downloading, and sharing community-built roles and collections
- Inclusions & Imports: The difference between static import_* and dynamic include_* tasks
- Collections: Managing modern Ansible content that bundles modules, roles, and plugins
- Ansible Vault: Encrypting sensitive data like passwords and API keys within your code
Goal: Solving complex orchestration and security challenges.
- Error Handling: Using failed_when, ignore_errors, and block/rescue/always for "self-healing" scripts
- Performance Tuning: Managing parallelism with forks, serial, and async tasks
- Dynamic Inventory: Connecting Ansible to AWS, Azure, or GCP to automatically discover servers
- Testing with Molecule: Developing "Unit Tests" for your roles to ensure quality before deployment
- Network Automation: Automating switches and routers (Cisco, Juniper, etc.) using specialized modules
Goal: Integrating Ansible into the broader DevOps pipeline.
- Ansible Automation Platform (AAP): Introduction to Controller (formerly Tower) for RBAC and job scheduling
- Ansible + Terraform: Using Terraform to provision hardware and Ansible to configure it
- CI/CD Pipelines: Running Ansible playbooks within Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions
- Container Automation: Managing Docker images and deploying to Kubernetes clusters