Ansible Configuration Management

In the course Ansible Configuration Management from SpiralTrain participants learn to use Ansible to automate the management of the IT infrastructure.

Ansible Architectuur

The course starts with an explanation of Ansible's multi-tier architecture that does not describe just one system, but how all systems are interrelated. Ansible does not use agents but connects to the nodes via SSH or other protocol and puts code in the form of Ansible Modules on the nodes to execute.

YAML Syntax

Next the YAML syntax is discussed. It is explained how Ansible groups the hosts with YAML in the hosts files. The joint hosts files then form the Ansible inventory.

Ansible Playbooks

Also attention is paid to Ansible playbooks that describe the commands, modules and tasks that are executed on a specific group of hosts from hosts files.

Task Automation

The precise details of automating tasks are also part of the course program. The parallelization of tasks, loops and conditional execution are treated and the use of environment variables is discussed as well.

Advanced Ansible

Finally attention is paid to a number of Ad-hoc Ansible commands such as shell commands and commands for managing files and directories and Advanced Ansible topics such as Playbook Includes, Custom Modules and Plugins are discussed.

Audience Course Ansible Configuration Management

The course Ansible Configuration Management is intended for system administrators and devops engineers who want to automate system administration and application deployment with Ansible.

Prerequisites Course Ansible Configuration Management

General experience with system management in an IT infrastructure is beneficial for the understanding.

Realization Training Ansible Configuration Management

The subject matter is discussed on the basis of presentation slides and demos. The theory is interchanged with exercises. The course material is in English. Course times are from 9.30 up and to 16.30.

Certification Ansible Configuration Management

After successful completion of the course participants will receive an official certificate Ansible Configuration Management.

Modules

Module 1 : Ansible Intro

• What is Ansible?
• Configuration Management
• Connecting Node
• Default SSH Connection
• Ansible Modules
• Management Node
• Hosts File
• Ansible Inventory
• Deployment Automation
• Tasks in Playbook
• YAML Configuration
• Service Orchestration
• Cloud Provisioning
• Multi-tier Deployment

Module 2 : YAML Syntax

• Understanding YAML
• YAML Start String
• YAML End String
• Indentation
• Key Value Pairs
• List Representation
• Abbreviations
• Dictionary Representation
• List inside Dictionary
• List of Dictionaries
• Include newlines
• Suppress newlines
• Booleans
• Case Sensitivity

Module 3 : Playbooks

• Target Section
• Variable Section
• Task Section
• Handlers Section
• template Module
• set_fact Module
• pause Module
• wait_for Module
• assemble Module
• add_host Module
• group_by Module
• slurp Module
• Windows Modules
• AWS Cloud Module

Module 4 : Controlling Tasks

• Operations in Parallel
• Looping
• Conditional Execution
• Task Delegation
• hostvars Variable
• group_names Variable
• inventory_dir Variable
• Finding Files with Variables
• Environment Variables
• External Data Lookups
• Storing Results

Module 5 : Ad-hoc Commands

• Parallelism Commands
• Shell Commands
• Passing Username
• File Transfers
• Secure Copy Protocol
• Managing Directories
• Managing Packages
• Gathering Facts
• Provisioning
• Ansible's Pull Mode
• Storing Secrets

Module 6 : Advanced Ansible

• Playbook Includes
• Task and Handler Includes
• Role Metadata
• Role Defaults
• Custom Modules
• Using Bash or Python
• External Inventories
• Extending Ansible
• Connection Plugins
• Lookup and Filter Plugins
• Callback Plugins