Introduction to Ansible

• What is Ansible?
• Ansible in DevOps World
• What Ansible Automates
• A short comparison of Ansible, Chef, Puppet and SaltStack
• Ansible History
• Installing Ansible

Hands-on Lab: Installing Ansible on the control node

Running Ad Hoc Commands

• Ansible Architecture
• Automation Engine
• Ansible Configuration File overview
• Ansible command syntax explained
• Authenticating Ansible Connections

Hands-on Lab: Testing Ansible connection to remote servers using password and key-based authentication methods by running Ad-Hoc commands.

Host Inventories

• Using a dedicated user
• Configuring key-based authentication walkthrough
• Working with static host inventories

Hands-on Lab: Performing a full setup of our hosts (create a dedicated user, authenticate the user with key-based authentication, give sudo permissions, static host inventory, set the “default” inventory, test “ansible” command) in order to be prepared for managing with Ansible playbooks.

YAML Overview. Basic Playbooks

• YAML overview
• Modules, Tasks, Plays, Playbooks
• General Playbook Structure
• Commonly used Modules (Service, Copy, Debug, File, Git, User, etc.)
• Task Results (OK vs changed vs failed)
• Validating the Result
• Writing Idempotent Tasks

Hands-on Labs:

• Learn how to write and use Ansible Playbooks. Use Ansible to prepare hosts for Ansible
• Commonly used modules: User and group modules, file module, copy module, lineinfile module
• Raw vs Command vs Shell
• Task results: OK vs Changed vs Failed

Basic Ansible Playbooks, Loops and Conditions

• What are Facts
• Fact Gathering
• Turn off fact gathering
• Custom facts
• Variable definition
• What are Loops
• Using Conditions
• Multiple Conditions
• Combining Loops and Conditions

Hands-on Labs:

• Reading and using Ansible facts. Facts vs variables. Loops and conditions
• Installing a webserver using Ansible

Ansible Modules Deep Dive. Writing Idempotent Playbooks.

• An in-depth approach to modules
• Idempotent playbooks

Hands-on Lab: Ansible Modules Deep Dive

Facts. Variables. Templates

• Templates Basics
• Template Module with examples
• Filters
• Checking a Template

Hands-on Labs:

• Using Jinja2 templates in Ansible in order to apply custom modifications.
• Using Jinja filters (number, IP address, hashing, random, shuffle, list filters)
• Configuring webservers using Ansible

Ansible Vault. Roles. First Steps to Building Reusable Playbooks

• Ansible Vault with encrypted files
• Using Playbooks with Vault
• Managing Vault Files
• Roles. Organizing Ansible Contents
• Directory Layout best practices
• Role Structure, Variables and Location

Hands-on Labs:

• Learn how to use Ansible Vault and how to manage sensitive data like passwords or keys in encrypted files.
• Understand Ansible roles. Create a role for configuring a reverse proxy / load balancer for our webservers.