Administering Red Hat Linux 8 - Part 3 : Linux Automation

This course introduces the delegate to the main concepts of Ansible Automation within the Red Hat Linux 8 operating system.

Although this Administering Red Hat Linux 8 - Part 3 : Linux Automation course is based on the Red Hat/CentOS Linux distribution, the delegate should be able to apply the concepts covered on this course to other Linux based distributions.

Exercises and examples are used throughout the course to give practical hands-on experience with the techniques covered.

The delegate will learn and acquire skills as follows:

• Install and configure Ansible
• Configure clients for use with Ansible
• Create and run Ad-hoc Ansible commands
• Understand the basics of the YAML Language
• Install and configure popular code editors
• Create and run Ansible Playbooks
• Use Ansible best practices
• Use Ansible command line options
• Create and use internal and external variables
• Understand and use Ansible facts
• Create and use Tasks
• Create and Use Roles
• Perform further Ansible configuration
• Search and download items from Ansible Galaxy
• Perform Linux Administration with Ansible
• Encrypt data with Ansible Vault
• Create Ansible loops
• Use Ansible within shell scripts

Linux System Administrators, DevOps teams, Managers and systems support personnel who need to be able to deploy, configure and maintain server configurations enterprise wide from a single point of control.

To provide the skills needed to use Ansible for the purpose of automation, configuration and management.

Delegates attending this Administering Red Hat Linux 8 - Part 3 : Linux Automation course should have experience of administering Red Hat Linux in an Enterprise environment to the level covered in the pre-requisite courses.

The requirements for this course can be met by either of the pre-requisite courses listed.

• Administering Red Hat Linux 8 - Part 2
• FastTrack to Red Hat Linux 8 System Administrator

• Course technical content is subject to change without notice.
• Course content is structured as sessions, this does not strictly map to course timings. Concepts, content and practicals often span sessions.

Course Contents - DAY 1

Course Introduction

• Administration and Course Materials
• Course Structure and Agenda
• Delegate and Trainer Introductions

Session 1: INTRODUCTION TO ANSIBLE

• Ansible in steps
• An overview of Ansible

Session 2: DEPLOYING ANSIBLE

• Installing Ansible on Linux systems
• Authenticating Ansible with SSH
• Ansible configuration
• The Ansible inventory
• Ansible client configuration

Session 3: AD-HOC COMMANDS

• Generating an ad-hoc command
• Command line options
• Module documentation
• Using modules with ad-hoc commands
• Verifying Ansible syntax

Session 4: YAML

• What is YAML
• Common YAML syntax errors
• Writing YAML with vim
• Installing and configuring code editors

Course Contents - DAY 2

Session 5: PLAYBOOKS AND TASKS

• What is a playbook
• The playbook header
• Tasks
• Importing items
• Playbook best practices

Session 6: SIMPLE PLAYBOOKS

• Basic Ansible modules
• The file module
• The lineinfile module
• The copy module
• The archive module

Session 7: SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION PLAYBOOKS

• Playbook command line options
• Playbook tags
• System administration modules
• The service module
• The firewalld module
• The user module

Session 8: FURTHER ANSIBLE PLAYBOOKS

• Further Ansible modules
• Disk partitioning with Ansible
• Creating filesystems with Ansible
• The cron module
• Security related modules
• Managing SELinux with Ansible

Course Contents - DAY 3

Session 9: VARIABLES AND FACTS

• Simple variables
• List and Dictionary methods
• Variables within external files
• Command line variables
• Ansible prompts
• Registering variables
• Using module return values
• Ansible facts
• Commonly used Ansible facts
• Using facts within a task
• Using conditional statements with facts

Session 10: ROLES AND TEMPLATES

• Ansible roles
• The Ansible Galaxy command
• The role directory structure
• Constructing an Ansible role
• File templates
• The Ansible Galaxy repository
• Downloading and executing roles

Course Contents - DAY 4

Session 11: FURTHER CONFIGURATION

• Ansible Parallelism
• Fact caching
• Ansible Vault
• Creating and accessing the vault
• Encrypting variables
• Ansible client and server logging
• Error handling
• Ignoring failed commands
• Handlers and failures

Session 12: LOOPS AND SCRIPTING

• Ansible loops
• Looping through variables
• Number sequencing
• Random values
• Retries
• Ansible within shell scripts