Ansible for the DevOps Beginners & System Admins

Set up a lab environment for ansible by configuring a control node on Amazon Linux and client nodes such as Amazon Linux and Ubuntu, with passwordless authentication and inventory updates.

Prepare an Ansible system on AWS by launching an EC2 instance, setting a hostname, creating an admin user with sudo access and ssh keys, and installing Ansible.

Install Ansible on an AWS EC2 instance by installing Python and pip, then using pip to install and verify Ansible, and set up /ctc/ansible with an ansible.cfg and hosts inventory.

Set up an Ansible managed node on RHEL by configuring hostname, creating an admin user with sudo access, enabling password-based authentication, and generating ssh keys for login.

Set up the Ansible control node and a managed server by updating the hosts file, copying SSH keys for passwordless authentication, and using Ansible all -m ping to verify connectivity.

Execute ansible ad-hoc commands using modules like command, stat, yum, and user to run uptime, check files, install git, and create John. Gather system information with the setup module.

Ansible uses an inventory to manage multiple hosts, with a default or custom hosts file. Use ansible.cfg to set the inventory and -i to target groups and ping hosts.

Discover how Ansible modules are reusable scripts that run on local or remote systems to perform tasks like creating users, installing packages, and updating configurations.

Learn to write your first Ansible playbook in yaml, define hosts and tasks, and use the user module to create a John user, with proper indentation and syntax.

Provision additional managed nodes on AWS, configuring Amazon Linux and Ubuntu hosts, creating an admin user, enabling password authentication, copying SSH keys, and validating reachability with Ansible ping.

learn to write an ansible playbook using the yum module to install packages on web servers, with become, state options, and git integration.

Use the ansible file module to create or remove files and directories on target systems, specifying path and state in a playbook, with optional become.

Use the copy module to transfer a file from local to remote hosts, specify src, dest, owner, group, and mode, and handle ownership with become when needed.

Use a single Ansible playbook to install httpd, start the httpd service, and remove it on web servers.

Install apache2 on Ubuntu using the Ansible apt module in a playbook. Start the apache2 service with the service module to ensure it is running.

Learn how notify and handlers coordinate tasks in an Ansible playbook to start the httpd service after installation, with conditional execution and re-run behavior.

Explore how gathering facts retrieves system information from remote nodes during an Ansible playbook, and how to enable or disable it to optimize tasks.

Use the when condition in an Ansible playbook to run tasks based on the os family, such as Red Hat or Debian, using gathered facts to install apache.

Update the Apache httpd playbook with when conditions for Red Hat and Debian, test uninstall tasks, and convert it into an Ansible role to remove Apache2 on all systems.

Add a copy task to the Apache httpd Ansible playbook to deploy index.html to /var/www/html with root privileges and 0666 permissions, ensuring the server serves the updated content.

Learn to install multiple packages in a single ansible task using a list, including git and wget, and understand why with_items is deprecated in favor of modern list syntax.

Explore how to use ansible variables across playbooks, external files, inventory-based vars, and command line extras, with naming rules and the emphasis on avoiding hard-coded values for repeatable automation.