Introduction to Ansible (Ansible 101)

Overview: Introduction to Ansible

Location: On-Site or Online
Pricing: $1,250 per seat (6-seat minimum)
Length: 4 Days

Course Summary

Introduction to Ansible is a practical, hands-on course designed to give students a strong foundation in infrastructure automation using Ansible, one of the industry’s most widely adopted automation frameworks.

Students learn how to design, read, and maintain Ansible playbooks to automate configuration, deployment, and orchestration across servers, network devices, and cloud environments. Core concepts such as inventories, modules, variables, roles, and automation best practices are reinforced through frequent labs and real-world scenarios.

By the end of the course, students are comfortable applying Ansible in day-to-day operations, reducing manual effort, improving consistency, and scaling automation with confidence.

Course Outline

Day 1 – Ansible Fundamentals and Core Concepts

• 💬 Lecture: Introduction to automation and Ansible use cases

• 💬 Lecture: Ansible architecture and execution model

• 💬 Lecture: Control nodes, managed nodes, and inventories

• 💬 Lecture: YAML fundamentals for Ansible

• ⚙️ Lab: Installing Ansible

• ⚙️ Verifying Ansible installation and versions

• ⚙️ Lab: Creating a static inventory

• ⚙️ Lab: Organizing hosts and groups

• ⚙️ Lab: Running ad-hoc commands

• 💬 Lecture: Modules, tasks, and idempotency

• ⚙️ Lab: Exploring modules with ansible-doc

• ⚙️ Lab: Executing simple module-based tasks

• ⚙️ Lab: Writing and running a first playbook

• ⚙️ Lab: Understanding play execution order

• ⚙️ Lab: Customizing behavior with ansible.cfg

Day 2 – Playbooks, Variables, and Roles

• 💬 Lecture: Structuring playbooks for readability and reuse

• 💬 Lecture: Variables, facts, and precedence

• ⚙️ Lab: Defining variables in inventories and vars files

• ⚙️ Lab: Overriding variables safely

• ⚙️ Lab: Working with gathered facts

• ⚙️ Lab: Using facts in playbook logic

• 💬 Lecture: Templates and dynamic configuration with Jinja2

• ⚙️ Lab: Creating templates with variables

• ⚙️ Lab: Rendering configuration files

• 💬 Lecture: Handlers and conditional logic

• ⚙️ Lab: Triggering handlers

• ⚙️ Lab: Using when for conditional execution

• 💬 Lecture: Roles and directory structure best practices

• ⚙️ Lab: Creating a role from scratch

• ⚙️ Lab: Refactoring an existing playbook into roles

• ⚙️ Lab: Parameterizing roles for reuse

Day 3 – Managing Systems and Infrastructure

• 💬 Lecture: Managing system state with Ansible

• ⚙️ Lab: Managing packages

• ⚙️ Lab: Starting and stopping services

• ⚙️ Lab: Managing files and directories

• ⚙️ Lab: Setting permissions and ownership

• ⚙️ Lab: Managing users and groups

• 💬 Lecture: Supporting multiple environments (dev, test, prod)

• ⚙️ Lab: Environment-specific inventories

• ⚙️ Lab: Using group variables per environment

• 💬 Lecture: Error handling and debugging techniques

• ⚙️ Lab: Debugging failed tasks

• ⚙️ Lab: Using debug, fail, and verbosity flags

• 💬 Lecture: Advanced task control

• ⚙️ Lab: Using tags to control execution

• ⚙️ Lab: Using loops to reduce repetition

• 💬 Lecture: Introduction to automating network and cloud resources

• ⚙️ Lab: Running playbooks across multiple hosts

• ⚙️ Lab: Coordinating multi-host changes safely

Day 4 – Best Practices, Security, and Real-World Automation

• 💬 Lecture: Securing data with Ansible Vault

• ⚙️ Lab: Creating encrypted variable files

• ⚙️ Lab: Using Vault within playbooks

• 💬 Lecture: Writing maintainable and scalable automation

• ⚙️ Lab: Refactoring playbooks for clarity

• ⚙️ Lab: Reducing duplication and technical debt

• 💬 Lecture: Testing and quality concepts

• ⚙️ Lab: Running ansible-lint

• ⚙️ Lab: Understanding ansible Assert and Fail

• 💬 Lecture: Integrating Ansible into CI/CD pipelines

• ⚙️ Lab: Running playbooks non-interactively

• ⚙️ Lab: Using variables and inventories in automated pipelines

• 💬 Lecture: Real-world automation patterns

• ⚙️ Lab: Building a complete automation workflow

• ⚙️ Lab: Combining inventories, roles, variables, handlers, and Vault

• ⚙️ Lab: Validating results and making controlled changes

Outcomes

Students who complete Introduction to Ansible will be able to:

• Write and understand Ansible playbooks with confidence

• Use variables, roles, and templates effectively

• Automate common infrastructure tasks safely

• Troubleshoot and debug automation failures

• Apply Ansible best practices in real operational environments