Ansible 101 – Essentials

At Course Completion

• Overview of Ansible and critical modules
• AI LLM prompt engineering for generating Ansible solutions
• Ansible collections for content delivery
• Building roles for code reuse
• YAML formatting
• Playbook construction and order of execution
• Jinja2 templating
• Static and Dynamic inventory management
• Credential Management and Encryption with Vault
• Finding solutions on Ansible Galaxy
• Version controlling code with Git

Audience Profile

• DevOps Engineers
• System and Cloud Administrators
• Network Engineers and Developers
• Python Developers

Prerequisites

• Coding experience in another language serves as an adequate prerequisite

Outline

Certification
•   Lecture + Lab: Alta3 Research Ansible Essentials Certification

AI LLM Toolkit
•   Lecture + Lab: Large Language Model toolkit for AI Solution Assistance

Ansible Overview
•   Lecture: Introduction to Ansible

Software Control Management
•   Lecture + Lab: SCM Option #1 - GitHub
•   Lecture + Lab: SCM Option #2 - GitLab

Ansible Basics
•   Lecture + Lab: Methods for Installing Ansible
•   Lecture: Static Inventory
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Host Inventory
•   Lecture + Lab: Ad-Hoc Modules and Gather Facts
•   Lecture: Introduction to YAML
•   Lecture + Lab: Running a Playbook
•   Lecture + Lab: ansible.cfg setup
•   Lecture + Lab: Building Playbooks - Bootstrap with raw, group and user Modules
•   Lecture + Lab: Loops and Vars Files in Playbooks

Critical Modules
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Module - shell
•   Lecture: Fully Qualified Collection Names
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Module - copy
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Module - apt
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Module - yum
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Module - get_url and uri
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Module - file
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Module - git
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Module - lineinfile and replace

Templating
•   Lecture: Templating with Jinja
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Module - template

Beyond Basics
•   Lecture + Lab: Debug, Loops, and YAML Lists
•   Lecture + Lab: When Conditionals, YAML Dictionaries, and Jinja
•   Lecture + Lab: Playbook Tags
•   Lecture + Lab: Playbook Vars Prompt
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Handlers and Listeners
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Error Handling
•   Lecture: Ansible Roles
•   Lecture + Lab: pre_tasks, roles, tasks, post_tasks, and handlers
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Playbook Output Logging
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Keywords - register and when
•   Lecture + Lab: Reading Variables into Playbooks

Plugin System
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Lookup Plugin
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Callback Plugins
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Plugin System
•   Lecture: Ansible Connection

Networking
•   Lecture + Lab: Exploring Switches with Ansible
•   Lecture + Lab: network_cli Playbook
•   Lecture + Lab: Backup Cisco, Juniper, Arista, and More
•   Lecture + Lab: Network Playbooks and Vendor Specific Modules
•   Lecture + Lab: Simplifying Network Playbooks with Agnostic Modules

Roles and Collections
•   Lecture: Augmenting Ansible with Collections
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Galaxy
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Collections

Cloud
•   Lecture: Ansible Dynamic Inventory
•   Lecture + Lab: YAML, JSON, Dynamic, and Cloud Inventories
•   Lecture: Configuring the Cloud with Ansible
•   Lecture: Ansible and Openstack
•   Lecture: Ansible and Azure
•   Lecture: Ansible and AWS

Security
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Vault

Testing
•   Lecture + Lab: Roles and Molecule

Programming
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible Module - script
•   Lecture + Lab: Writing an Ansible Module with Python

Triggering
•   Lecture + Lab: Ansible AWX