Ansible

Agentless configuration management.

Ansible is taught here in 12 lessons, running from Inventories and ad-hoc commands through to Scaling: dynamic inventory and AWX. Each lesson takes one topic, shows the working code, and links onward to the next, so the course can be read straight through in order.

Lessons

1. Inventories and ad-hoc commandsDescribe your machines in an inventory, connect over SSH without installing an agent, and run one-off tasks from the command line.
2. Playbooks and modulesA playbook is YAML that states the desired end result: plays, tasks, module arguments, variables and handlers.
3. Roles, Vault and idempotencyPackage reusable automation as roles, keep secrets encrypted with Vault, and write tasks that converge instead of repeating themselves.
4. Installing Ansible and setting up a control nodeInstall the package or the pip distribution, configure ansible.cfg with a predictable precedence, set up SSH keys and become, install collections, and check connectivity.
5. Variables, facts and Jinja2 templatingVariable precedence, defaults and vars files, magic variables, gathered and custom facts, the template module, and Jinja2 filters, tests and conditionals.
6. Conditionals, loops and handlers in depthwhen expressions and registered results, loop and its controls, until with retries, changed_when and failed_when, and handler ordering with flush_handlers.
7. Managing files, packages and servicescopy, template and file, lineinfile and blockinfile, the package abstraction, systemd and service management, and handler-driven restarts.
8. Users, SSH keys and secure defaultsCreate users and groups, manage authorized keys, write sudoers rules safely, set permissions and sysctl, and keep Vault secrets out of the logs.
9. Collections, Galaxy and the module ecosystemCollections versus roles, installing from a requirements file, FQCN module names, the ansible-galaxy commands, and evaluating a third-party role before you depend on it.
10. Error handling, blocks and rescueblock, rescue and always, ignore_errors and failed_when, asserting prerequisites, retries and timeouts, and making a failed run safe to repeat.
11. Testing automation: lint, check mode and Moleculeansible-lint profiles and rules, --check and --diff with their limits, Molecule scenarios on containers, and running the whole thing in CI.
12. Scaling: dynamic inventory and AWXCloud and CMDB inventory plugins, inventory caching, delegation and serial strategies, delegated facts, and a controller with AWX or Automation Platform workflows.

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