Ansible for the Absolute Beginner - Hands-On - DevOps

1. Introduction

Get a warm welcome from your instructor, Mumshad Mahamath, a DevOps trainer with extensive industry experience. Discover how this course simplifies complex concepts using animations and illustrations, provides hands-on exercises in a browser-based lab environment, and empowers you to work on real-world projects.

2. Introduction to Ansible

Explore what Ansible is and how it can revolutionize IT automation. Learn how Ansible simplifies repetitive tasks, even for those without coding skills. Understand the power of Ansible playbooks and the flexibility it offers for automation across different environments.

3. A Quick Reminder

Receive a friendly reminder about the importance of focusing on the course's labs and videos to maximize your learning experience.

1. Introduction to Ansible Configuration Files

Uncover the intricacies of Ansible configuration files in this video. Learn about the default behavior of Ansible, the structure of configuration files, and how to override parameters to tailor Ansible to your specific needs.

2. Introduction to YAML

Get introduced to YAML, the language that powers Ansible playbooks. Discover how YAML represents data through key-value pairs, lists, and dictionaries, with a focus on correct spacing and data organization. Understand when and how to use dictionaries, lists, and lists of dictionaries effectively.

3. Accessing the labs

Learn how to access the labs on Kodecloud, providing you with a practical environment to apply your Ansible knowledge. This video ensures you can effectively practice what you've learned in the course labs.

1. Ansible Inventory

Discover the significance of Ansible inventory in this video. Learn how Ansible connects to target systems using SSH and how inventory files store essential information about those systems. You'll explore the INI-like format of inventory files, learn about parameters like ansible_host, ansible_port, and more, and understand the basics of defining target systems for Ansible.

2. Inventory Formats

Dive into the different inventory formats Ansible supports, INI and YAML. Understand how to choose the right format for your projects based on complexity and flexibility. Just like organizations choose the right organizational chart for their operations, selecting the correct inventory format is crucial to managing your IT infrastructure efficiently.

3. Grouping and Parent-Child Relationships

This video introduces Ansible's grouping and parent-child relationship features, allowing you to categorize servers based on their roles, locations, or other criteria. Learn how to create common labels or groups for efficient management and operations, ensuring that tasks are applied uniformly to all servers in a group.

1. Ansible Variables

In this section, we explore Ansible variables, which are essential for customizing tasks and playbooks. Learn how to define and use variables efficiently for server configurations.

3. Registering Variables and Variable Precedence

Dive into variable precedence in Ansible and understand how variables defined at different levels impact your playbooks. Learn about registering variables and using them to capture task outputs.

4. Variable Scoping

Delve into variable scoping in Ansible, which dictates where and how variables can be accessed. Explore host scope, play scope, and global variables, and understand how they affect your playbooks.

5. Magic Variables

Uncover Ansible's magic variables, such as hostvars, groups, and group_names. These variables allow you to access information about other hosts and groups within your playbooks.

6. Ansible Facts

Learn about Ansible facts, which provide detailed information about target hosts. See how to gather facts, access the data using the ansible_facts variable, and control fact gathering in your playbooks.

1. Ansible Playbooks

Explore Ansible Playbooks, Ansible's orchestration language, where you define tasks and instructions for Ansible. See how to create and structure playbooks in YAML format. Understand the key components of plays, tasks, hosts, and modules.

2. Verifying Playbooks

Learn the importance of verifying playbooks before running them in a production environment. Discover Ansible's check mode and diff mode to catch and rectify errors, ensuring smooth playbook execution and avoiding unintended issues.

3. Ansible-lint

Introduce Ansible-Lint, a tool for playbook and role linting. It checks for errors, bugs, stylistic issues, and suspicious constructs in your Ansible code, helping ensure consistency and quality across playbooks, roles, and collections.

4. Conditionals

Explore how to use conditionals in Ansible to control the execution of tasks based on specific conditions. Understand how to use facts, variables, and conditional statements to make your playbooks more efficient and flexible.

5. Ansible Conditionals based on facts, variables, re-use

Dive deeper into Ansible conditionals. Learn how to use facts, variables, and conditionals to perform different actions based on the target server's operating system, environment, or specific conditions. See how conditionals can enhance playbook flexibility.

6. Loops

Explore Ansible loops, a powerful feature that allows you to repeat tasks efficiently. Understand how to use loops with arrays of strings and dictionaries. Discover the with_items and loop directives to create loops and iterate over items in your playbooks.

1. Ansible Modules

This video introduces Ansible modules, categorizing them based on their functionality. It covers various module types, including system modules, command modules, file modules, and database modules. You'll learn how modules help automate actions such as managing system resources, executing commands, working with files, and interacting with databases.

2. Introduction to Ansible Plugins

In this video, you'll explore Ansible plugins and their role in extending Ansible's capabilities. It discusses the use of custom inventory plugins to fetch real-time data from cloud providers, custom module plugins for provisioning resources, and action plugins for load balancer management.

3. Modules & Plugins Index

This video introduces the Ansible Modules and Plugins Index, a valuable resource for finding the right tools to address specific automation needs. It demonstrates how to search for modules and plugins based on keywords, categories, and criteria. The video highlights the detailed documentation provided for each tool, version compatibility, and the collaborative contributions of the Ansible community.

1. Introduction to Handlers

This video introduces the concept of handlers in Ansible. It addresses the challenge of ensuring configuration changes take effect by manually restarting services. Handlers provide an automated solution by associating tasks with specific actions like service restarts. You'll learn how to use handlers to streamline the automation process, reducing manual intervention, and improving infrastructure management.

2. Ansible Roles

In this video, Ansible roles are explained as a way to modularize and organize tasks. Just like assigning roles to individuals in the real world, roles are assigned to servers in Ansible, making them, for example, web servers or database servers. The video highlights the benefits of roles in terms of reusability, best practices, and code organization.

3. Ansible Collections

This video introduces Ansible collections as a way to access specialized automation content. Collections like Network.Cisco and Network.Juniper offer vendor-specific modules and roles tailored for network automation. You'll learn how to install collections, utilize vendor-specific functionalities, and benefit from expanded capabilities, modularity, and simplified distribution of Ansible content.

1. Introduction to Templating

This video introduces the concept of templating using Jinja 2. It provides a simple, real-world example of creating customized email invitations for a company's employees. The video explains how templates and variables are fundamental components of templating engines, showcasing how variables can be manipulated with filters. The focus here is on understanding the basics of templating, which is essential for Ansible playbooks and infrastructure management.

2. Jinja2 Templates for Dynamic Configs - Demo

In this video, you'll delve into Ansible's implementation of Jinja 2 templates. It highlights the built-in filters provided by Jinja 2 and introduces Ansible's extensions of these filters, emphasizing their utility in infrastructure tasks. The video guides you through the process of converting a regular file into a Jinja 2 template, explaining how the template module is used to perform variable interpolation.

1. Demo - Part 1 - Setup Lab - Install VirtualBox

In this video, you will learn how to set up a lab environment for Ansible using Oracle VirtualBox. The demonstration provides a step-by-step guide to install VirtualBox, create a CentOS template system, and establish an Ansible control machine and target machines on your local laptop. This practical setup is crucial for learning and testing Ansible's capabilities.

2. Demo - Part 2 - Setup Lab - Clone VMs and Install Ansible

This video walks you through the process of installing Ansible on your Ansible control machine. You will follow the installation instructions provided by Ansible's official documentation. After installation, you will verify Ansible's presence and perform a connectivity test between the Ansible control machine and target machines. We will also cover SSH key management for secure connectivity, emphasizing best practices for production environments.