Hands-On Infrastructure Automation with Ansible

Hands-On Infrastructure Automation with Ansible

by Alan Hohn
Released April 2018
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781788991599

Watch it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Video description

Ansible is an infrastructure automation framework; other examples include Chef, Puppet, and SaltStack. While each framework offers its own unique features, Ansible has an advantage: simplicity. Ansible configuration uses simple, compact, and clean YAML files that are easy to understand and maintain. Ansible is agentless, which means Ansible itself doesn't need to be installed on target machines. At the same time, while Ansible is simple to learn, it is powerful and extensible, making it the perfect choice even for demanding tasks such as configuring an entire OpenStack cluster.

This video course will show you how to use Ansible to automate deployment so you can quickly and reliably run and upgrade your applications. You will learn how Infrastructure Automation results in cost reduction, productivity, availability, reliability, and performance. You will follow along step-by-step on a real Ansible deployment of dotCMS, an open-source Content Management System (CMS), which will deliver content to websites, intranets and mobile apps. You will gain real-world experience that will get you started quickly on your own deployments. This will include information on all of Ansible's core concepts and features, including playbooks, tasks, roles, templates, variables, and modules.

By the end of the course, you will be able to create and maintain Ansible playbooks, roles, and custom modules, enabling you to make full use of Ansible as part of a DevOps or automation strategy.

What You Will Learn

  • Create a rapid reliable application deployment.
  • Structure your Ansible configuration for easy maintenance.
  • Manage multiple servers from a single Ansible environment with different and overlapping configuration.
  • Perform advanced tasks simply with structured data.
  • Build custom Ansible roles and modules.
  • ]Easily edit variables in encrypted files, and seamlessly decrypt data.

Audience

This video course is aimed at programmers, systems administrators, and DevOps engineers who are beginning to learn Ansible and want to take the next step in their Ansible knowledge.

About The Author

Alan Hohn: Alan Hohn is a Software Architect who primarily works with distributed Java. He has had a lot of experience re-architecting embedded systems and in combining embedded and enterprise approaches. Lately he has been doing quite a bit of work with virtualization, DevOps, and cloud technologies. Over the past several years, he has had the opportunity to teach courses on Java. His role and interest also mean that he frequently tries out new libraries and new approaches. His hope is that some of that material will be as useful to others as he has occasionally found it. He is employed by Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training and his personal blog is called Variegated.

Table of contents

  1. Chapter 1 : What Ansible Can Do?
    1. The Course Overview
    2. Ansible Demo
    3. DevOps and Immutable Infrastructure
    4. Ansible As a Choice for DevOps
    5. Ansible Install and Remote Management
    6. Running Ansible Commands
  2. Chapter 2 : Exploring Inventory and Playbook Usage
    1. Ansible Inventory File
    2. Introduction to Playbooks
    3. Using Tasks and Handlers
    4. Configuring Systems through the Inventory
    5. Creating Inventory Groups
    6. Controlling Playbook Runs
  3. Chapter 3 : Applying Roles to Multiple Systems
    1. Create and Use Roles
    2. Applying Commonly Used Modules
    3. Getting Roles from Ansible Galaxy
    4. Using Role Handlers, Files, and Templates
    5. Role Dependencies
  4. Chapter 4 : Using the Template Library
    1. Writing Out Files from a Template
    2. Template Flow Control
    3. Repeated Configuration Content
    4. Using Defaults and Filters
    5. Defining Reusable Blocks and Inheritance
  5. Chapter 5 : Maintaining Roles and Templates with Variables
    1. Using Variables for All Roles
    2. Exploring Ansible Facts
    3. Applying Variables to Groups and Hosts
    4. Using Variables to Control Tasks
    5. Registering Results in Variables
    6. Using Lists and Dictionaries in Tasks
  6. Chapter 6 : Storing Your Project Files in the Vault
    1. Ansible Vault Purpose
    2. Encrypt and Decrypt Files
    3. Create Vault Password Files
    4. Encrypting Files for Delivery
  7. Chapter 7 : Building Custom Modules for Tasks
    1. Ansible Module Structure
    2. Module Arguments and Results
    3. Module Idempotence
    4. Module Check Mode and Module Testing
    5. Module Documentation and Metadata
  8. Chapter 8 : Using Ansible with Other Tools
    1. Ansible Docker Connector
    2. Ansible with Vagrant
    3. Ansible and Vagrant Custom Variables
    4. Ansible and Packer
    5. Using Packer and Ansible to Build Docker Images

Product information

  • Title: Hands-On Infrastructure Automation with Ansible
  • Author(s): Alan Hohn
  • Release date: April 2018
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781788991599