Orchestrate major cloud platforms such as OpenStack, AWS, and Azure
Use Ansible to automate network devices
Automate your containerized workload with Docker, Podman, or Kubernetes
Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook
Description
Ansible empowers you to automate a myriad of tasks, including software provisioning, configuration management, infrastructure deployment, and application rollouts. It can be used as a deployment tool as well as an orchestration tool. While Ansible provides simple yet powerful features to automate multi-layer environments using agentless communication, it can also solve other critical IT challenges, such as ensuring continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) with zero downtime.
In this book, you'll work with the latest release of Ansible and learn how to solve complex issues quickly with the help of task-oriented scenarios. You'll start by installing and configuring Ansible on Linux and macOS to automate monotonous and repetitive IT tasks and learn concepts such as playbooks, inventories, and roles. As you progress, you'll gain insight into the YAML syntax and learn how to port between Ansible versions. Additionally, you'll understand how Ansible enables you to orchestrate multi-layer environments such as networks, containers, and the cloud.
By the end of this Ansible book, you'll be well versed in writing playbooks and other related Ansible code to overcome all your IT challenges, from infrastructure-as-a-code provisioning to application deployments and handling mundane day-to-day maintenance tasks.
Who is this book for?
This book is for DevOps engineers, administrators, or any IT professionals looking to automate IT tasks using Ansible. Prior knowledge of Ansible is not a prerequisite.
What you will learn
Explore the fundamentals of the Ansible framework
Understand how collections enhance your automation efforts
Avoid common mistakes and pitfalls when writing automation code
Extend Ansible by developing your own modules and plugins
Contribute to the Ansible project by submitting your own code
Follow best practices for working with cloud environment inventories
Troubleshoot issues triggered during Ansible playbook runs
This is an exhaustive step by step guide into using Ansible. The document is chock-full of examples, code, and details on how to set up, integrate and maximize your use of Ansible. This is a vital reference guide for anyone using Ansible on a daily basis. If you only use Ansible infrequently, this still can be a great reference to look for the Yaml specifics and elements that can help you succeed to the next level.
Amazon Verified review
A. ZubarevJan 21, 2024
5
I have been trying to navigate the ever growing complexities of deployments automation and the IaC (even though it is not my primary task) for quite some time. My primary objectives are to create tested out, repeatable deployments and have them documented. Ansible is seemingly the perfect tool for that.I picked the electronic copy of Practical Ansible for being the most up to date with the latest advancements in it, and because it is a 2nd edition of the book from a mature duo of authors.The book is well structured starting with a gentle introduction to the philosophy of Ansible and its limitations to advanced coding (best practices included), but wait, there is even a chapter on Kubernetes!On the limitations side of the tool, be aware that even though Microsoft is fully committed to Python without which no serious automation is possible it requires knowledge of PowerShell. To add another, I realized Ansible has no notion of state. I trust things will improve over time because it is backed by RedHat.The book has material solidifying questions and self-assessments which help to persist the focus points in memory (I always value them).If I can think of a negative, it would be on the Ansible's UI chapter, it felt too short, or maybe the Ansible project did not think UI first.Let's put it simply: the book delivers superbly on the topic of automation and thereby recommended.
Amazon Verified review
jmlJan 21, 2024
5
Practical Ansible 2e is a well-written, easy to follow book that will become the go-to reference for anyone working with Ansible. Coverage starts with the basics and progresses in a logical fashion through real-life implementation recipes including discussions of YAML and playbooks, Galaxy, conditionals, loops, blocks, and version control via ansible-pull. The new (to 2.9) collections functionality is discussed along with the existing modules and plugins groupings. Directory layout, playbooks, updates, security, and troubleshooting are all given good treatment and of course containerization via Kubernetes is covered as well.There’s not much, if anything, in the Ansible world that is missing from this book. The writing style is clear and explanatory, numerous examples are provided, and each chapter ends with a quiz, making Practical Ansible 2e usable as a textbook. The one improvement that I’d recommend would be to provide the quiz answers at the end of the quiz in each chapter rather than at the end of the book, eliminating the necessity to flip back and forth in order to check your work. Overall. Practical Ansible 2e needs to be on every Ansible developer’s bookshelf.
James Freeman is an accomplished IT professional with over 25 years' experience in the technology industry. He has more than a decade of first-hand experience in solving real-world enterprise problems in production environments using Ansible, open source, and AWS. As part of this work, he frequently introduces Ansible as a new technology to businesses and CTOs for the first time. In addition, he has co-authored five books and one video training course on Ansible, facilitated bespoke Ansible workshops and training sessions, and presented at both international conferences and meetups on Ansible.
Daniel Oh is a Java Champion and senior principal developer advocate at Red Hat. He works to evangelize building cloud-native microservices and serverless functions with cloud-native runtimes to developers. He also continues to contribute to various open source cloud projects and ecosystems as a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ambassador to accelerate hybrid cloud platform adoption in a variety of enterprises. Daniel also speaks at technical seminars, workshops, and meetups to elaborate on new emerging technologies for enterprise developers, SREs, platform engineers, and DevOps teams.
Fabio Alessandro Locati – commonly known as Fale – is an EMEA associate principal solutions architect at Red Hat, a public speaker, an author, and an open source contributor. His primary areas of expertise are Linux, automation, security, and cloud technologies. Fale has more than 15 years of working experience in IT, with many of them spent consulting for various organizations, including dozens of Fortune 500 companies. Fale has written Learning Ansible 2.7, Learning Ansible 2, and OpenStack Cloud Security, and has been part of the review process of multiple books.
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