Practical Ansible: Learn how to automate infrastructure, manage configuration, and deploy applications

Practical Ansible
Contributors
About the authors
About the reviewers
Preface
   Who this book is for
   What this book covers
   To get the most out of this book
   Download the example code files
   Conventions used
   Get in touch
   Share your thoughts
   Download a free PDF copy of this book
Part 1:Learning the Fundamentals of Ansible
1
Getting Started with Ansible
   Technical requirements
   Installing and configuring Ansible
      Understanding Ansible version numbers
      Installing Ansible on Linux and FreeBSD
      Working with virtual environments
      Installing from GitHub
      Installing Ansible on macOS
      Configuring Windows hosts for Ansible
   Getting to know your Ansible installation
      Understanding how Ansible connects to hosts
      Verifying the Ansible installation
   Managed node requirements
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
2
Understanding the Fundamentals of Ansible
   Technical requirements
   Getting familiar with the Ansible framework
      Breaking down the Ansible components
      Learning the YAML syntax
      Organizing your automation code
   Exploring the configuration file
   Command-line arguments
   Understanding ad hoc commands
      Defining variables
   Understanding Jinja2 filters
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
3
Defining Your Inventory
   Technical requirements
   Creating an inventory file and adding hosts
      Using host groups
      Adding host and group variables to your inventory
   Generating a dynamic inventory file
      Using multiple inventory sources in the inventory directories
      Using static groups with dynamic groups
   Special host management using patterns
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
4
Playbooks and Roles
   Technical requirements
   Understanding the playbook framework
      Comparing playbooks and ad hoc tasks
      Defining plays and tasks
   Understanding roles – the playbook organizer
      Setting up role-based variables and dependencies
      Ansible Galaxy
   Using conditions in your code
   Repeating tasks with loops
   Grouping tasks using blocks
   Configuring play execution via strategies
   Using ansible-pull
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
Part 2:Expanding the Capabilities of Ansible
5
Creating and Consuming Modules
   Technical requirements
   Executing multiple modules using the command line
   Reviewing the module index
   Accessing module documentation from the command line
   Module return values
   Developing custom modules
      Avoiding common pitfalls
      Testing and documenting your module
      The module checklist
      Contributing upstream – submitting a GitHub pull request
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
6
Creating and Consuming Collections
   Technical requirements
   Introduction to Ansible collections
   Understanding fully qualified collection names
   Managing collections on your control node
   Updating your Ansible collections and core installation
   Creating your own collections
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
7
Creating and Consuming Plugins
   Technical requirements
   Discovering the plugin types
   Finding included plugins
   Creating custom plugins
      Learning to integrate custom plugins with Ansible source code
   Sharing plugins with the community
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
8
Coding Best Practices
   Technical requirements
   The preferred directory layout
   Differentiating between different environment types
   The proper approach to defining group and host variables
   Using top-level playbooks
   Leveraging version control tools
   Setting OS and distribution variances
   Porting between Ansible versions
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
9
Advanced Ansible Topics
   Technical requirements
   Asynchronous versus synchronous actions
   Controlling play execution for rolling updates
   Configuring the maximum failure percentage
   Setting task execution delegation
   Using the run_once option
   Running playbooks locally
   Working with proxies and jump hosts
   Configuring playbook prompts
   Placing tags in the plays and tasks
   Securing data with Ansible Vault
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
Part 3:Using Ansible in an Enterprise
10
Network Automation with Ansible
   Technical requirements
   Why automate network management?
   How Ansible manages networking devices
      How to enable network automation
      The available Ansible networking modules
   Connecting to network devices
      Environment variables for network devices
   Custom conditional statements for networking devices
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
11
Container and Cloud Management
   Technical requirements
   Automating Docker and Podman with Ansible
      Managing Docker
      Managing Podman
   Managing Kubernetes with Ansible
      Installing Ansible Kubernetes dependencies
      Listing Kubernetes namespaces with Ansible
      Creating a Kubernetes namespace with Ansible
      Creating a Kubernetes service with Ansible
   Exploring container-focused modules
   Automating with Amazon Web Services
      Installation
      Authentication
      Creating your first machine
   Complementing Google Cloud Platform with automation
      Installation
      Authentication
      Creating your first machine
   Seamless automation integration with Azure
      Installation
      Authentication
      Creating your first machine
   Using Ansible to orchestrate OpenStack
      Installation
      Authentication
      Creating your first machine
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
12
Troubleshooting and Testing Strategies
   Technical requirements
   Digging into playbook execution problems
   Using host facts to diagnose failures
   Testing with a playbook
   Using check mode
   Solving host connection issues
   Passing working variables via the CLI
   Limiting the host’s execution
   Flushing the code cache
   Checking for bad syntax
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
13
Getting Started with Ansible Automation Controller
   Technical requirements
   Installing AWX
   Running your first playbook from AWX
      Creating an AWX project
      Creating an inventory
      Creating a job template
      Running a job
   Controlling access to AWX
      Creating a user
      Creating a team
      Creating an organization
      Assigning permissions in AWX
   Summary
   Questions
14
Execution Environments
   Technical requirements
   The importance of execution environments
   Building an execution environment
      Creating a minimal execution environment
      Creating an execution environment with a specific Python interpreter
      Creating an execution environment with additional dependencies
   Running playbooks in an execution environment
   Uploading execution environments to a container registry
   Using execution environments in Ansible Automation Controller
   Summary
   Questions
   Further reading
Assessments
   Chapter 1
   Chapter 2
   Chapter 3
   Chapter 4
   Chapter 5
   Chapter 6
   Chapter 7
   Chapter 8
   Chapter 9
   Chapter 10
   Chapter 11
   Chapter 12
   Chapter 13
   Chapter 14
Index
   Why subscribe?
Other Books You May Enjoy
   Packt is searching for authors like you
   Share your thoughts
   Download a free PDF copy of this book