Practical Ansible

Chapter 1:  Configuration Management With Ansible

Chapter Goal: Introduce configuration management and automation, introduce Ansible

No of pages: 20 - 25

Sub -Topics

1. Introduce Ansible to readers and installation onto your system.
2. Start with the basic configurations of Ansible and basic command line options.
3. Introduce working with Ansible on the command line, and demonstrate the basics of Ansible Playbooks.
4. Introduce common Ansible Modules used in day to day configuration management.
5. Introduce the projects we are going to work with during this book. A LAMP Stack for the first part of the book and a Splunk Server towards the end of the book when deploying to AWS.

Chapter 2:  Ansible Playbooks

Chapter Goal: Expand knowledge of Ansible with an in depth look at Ansible Playbooks

No of pages: 20 - 25

Sub - Topics  

1. Start with a brief discussion on YAML Syntax and how it relates to Ansible Playbooks.
Demonstrate how we can join numerous modules together to create a larger project Ansible Playbooks.
2. Expand Playbook functionality with import, include, loops and variables.
Start creating the Ansible Playbook for our first project of the book, the LAMP Stack.

Chapter 3: Expanding Playbooks With Roles and Templates

Chapter Goal: Expand the LAMP Stack project further expanding the readers knowledge on the use of Ansible Playbooks

No of pages: 20 - 25

Sub - Topics: 

1. Introduce Ansible Roles and create roles for the LAMP Stack including Web Server, Database and Django Server.
2. Provide a discussion on how to use command line options and variables with Ansible Playbooks.

3.  Configuring Playbooks using conditional tasks and tags to limit what changes are made by the Ansible Playbook.

 

Chapter 4: Custom Ansible Modules, Vaults And Galaxay's

Chapter Goal: Provide an introduction to using Ansible Vault to manage their system secrets, as well as  exploring Ansible Galaxy to help them fast track their project deployments.

No of pages: 20 - 25

Sub - Topics:

1. Provide the reader with a demonstration on how to use Ansible Vault to help manage secrets within your Ansible Projects.
2. Provide an introduction to Ansible Galaxy getting the reader familiar with searching and using third party roles in Ansible Galaxy.
3. Demonstrate to the reader how they can start to create their own roles in Ansible Galaxy.
Demonstrate to the user how with some basic Python skills, they can create their own Ansible Modules if they need to.

 

Chapter 5: Working with Ansible In The Cloud

Chapter Goal: The goal of this chapter is to provide a brief introduction to Amazon Web services and get the reader to implement Ansible Playbooks that deploy to AWS.

No of pages: 20 - 25

Sub - Topics:

1. Introduce Amazon Web Services to the reader and provide a brief discussion on what it is and how you can create your own AWS account.
2. Discuss how to allow Ansible and your playbooks to interact with AWS and deploy services to the cloud.
Introduce the reader to the modules you will be using to create your new services on AWS.
3. Create our new project playbook for our second project to deploy a Splunk Server to AWS.

 

Chapter 6: AWS Templates and CloudFormation Scripts

Chapter Goal: Expand the readers knowledge further on deploying to their projects to AWS using templates, working with Ansible Pull and using GitHub rep