What this book covers
Chapter 1, Ansible Automation – Introduction, gives you an introduction to Ansible and teaches you how to install and configure Ansible and configure managed nodes.
Chapter 2, Starting with Simple Automation, teaches you how to identify manual tasks to automate, find suitable Ansible modules, and use text editors for Ansible.
Chapter 3, Automating Your Daily Jobs, is the chapter where you started developing Ansible playbooks for real-life use cases, such as system information gathering, system reboot, and security scanning. You will also learn about Ansible collections, secrets in Ansible, and automating notifications.
Chapter 4, Exploring Collaboration in Automation Development, teaches you about the importance of version control in IT automation and the best practices to use source control management for storing Ansible artifacts.
Chapter 5, Expanding Your Automation Landscape, covers the methods to find automation use cases from your workplace and check the feasibility of automation. This chapter also teaches you how to use a dynamic inventory in Ansible.
Chapter 6, Automating Microsoft Windows and Network Devices, is where you discover the possibilities to automate Microsoft Windows and network devices using Ansible. This chapter will cover practical examples for Windows automation, VyOS fact gathering, and access control list creation on a Cisco ASA device.
Chapter 7, Managing Your Virtualization and Cloud Platforms, teaches you about Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and the methods to use Ansible as an IaC tool with practical examples for managing the VMware, AWS, and GCP platforms.
Chapter 8, Helping the Database Team with Automation, covers an introduction to database operations, such as installing the database server and creating databases, tables, and database users.
Chapter 9, Implementing Automation in a DevOps Workflow, is where you will be introduced to DevOps and the usage of Ansible in a DevOps workflow, with practical examples for reducing deployment time and managing application load balancers and rolling updates. The chapter also covers how to integrate Ansible with Terraform.
Chapter 10, Managing Containers Using Ansible, continues the look at Ansible and DevOps by covering the methods to manage application containers using Ansible. This chapter covers practical use cases such as deploying container hosts, using Ansible in CI/CD pipelines, building containers, and managing multi-container applications.
Chapter 11, Managing Kubernetes Using Ansible, goes into more container-based use cases with an introduction to Kubernetes and the method to manage Kubernetes clusters and applications using Ansible. The chapter teaches you how to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications on the Kubernetes platform.
Chapter 12, Integrating Ansible with Your Tools, covers the introduction to the enterprise automation tool Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP). This chapter teaches you methods for using AAP for automation with practical examples, such as database management, Jenkins integration, and Slack notification.
Chapter 13, Using Ansible for Secret Management, explains the methods to handle sensitive data in automation using Ansible Vault and how to use encrypted data in Ansible playbooks.
Chapter 14, Keeping Automation Simple and Efficient, teaches you about the survey forms in Ansible automation controller and workflow job templates. This chapter also covers security automation and integrating Ansible with monitoring tools.
Chapter 15, Automating Non-Standard Platforms and Operations, teaches you the automate to handle non-supported platforms using raw commands and API commands. This chapter also teaches you how to develop custom Ansible modules for when there are no modules available.
Chapter 16, Ansible Automation Best Practices for Production, is where you learn the production best practices for Ansible, such as organizing Ansible artifacts, inventories, and variables. This chapter also covers the best practices for credential management and playbook development.
