Hands-on Infrastructure Automation with Ansible

Automate Infrastructure with Ansible: A Comprehensive Guide

Looking to streamline your deployments and boost efficiency? This course dives into Ansible, a leading infrastructure automation framework, often compared to tools like Chef, Puppet, and SaltStack. But what sets Ansible apart? Its simplicity.

Ansible configuration relies on straightforward, compact, and clean YAML files, making them easy to read, understand, and maintain. Unlike some other solutions, Ansible is agentless, meaning you don't need to install any software on the machines you're managing.

Don't let the simplicity fool you – Ansible is incredibly powerful and extensible. It's perfectly suited for even complex tasks, such as configuring an entire OpenStack cluster.

What you'll learn:

• Automate deployments quickly and reliably, ensuring smooth application runs and upgrades.
• Understand how Infrastructure Automation drives significant benefits: cost reduction, increased productivity, improved availability, enhanced reliability, and optimized performance.
• Follow a step-by-step, real-world Ansible deployment of dotCMS, a popular open-source Content Management System (CMS), used for delivering content to websites, intranets, and mobile apps.
• Gain practical experience to kickstart your own automation projects.
• Master Ansible's core concepts and features:
  • Playbooks: Orchestrate your automation workflows.
  • Tasks: Define individual actions to be performed.
  • Roles: Package and reuse automation components.
  • Templates: Create dynamic configuration files.
  • Variables: Manage configuration settings.
  • Modules: Perform specific actions on target systems.
• Develop the skills to create and maintain Ansible playbooks, roles, and custom modules, empowering you to leverage Ansible within a robust DevOps or automation strategy.

About the Author:

Alan Hohn, a Software Architect specializing in distributed Java, brings extensive experience in re-architecting embedded systems and integrating embedded and enterprise technologies to this course. With a strong focus on virtualization, DevOps, and cloud technologies, Alan has a passion for exploring new tools and approaches. He's employed by Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training and shares his insights on his personal blog, Variegated. He hopes this course will provide valuable knowledge and practical skills for fellow automation enthusiasts.