Introduction to Ansible (Ansible 101)

A practical, hands-on introduction to automating IT infrastructure using one of the industry’s most widely adopted automation frameworks, Ansible. Students learn how to build, read, and manage Ansible playbooks to automate configuration, deployment, and orchestration across servers, network devices, and cloud environments. The class covers core concepts such as inventories, modules, variables, roles, and automation best practices, while emphasizing real-world use cases that help teams reduce manual effort, improve consistency, and scale operations with confidence.

Location: On-Site or On-Line

Course Outline

Day 1 – Ansible Fundamentals and Core Concepts

• Introduction to automation and Ansible use cases

• Ansible architecture and components

• Control nodes, managed nodes, and inventories

• YAML basics for Ansible

• Running ad-hoc commands and simple playbooks

• Modules, tasks, and idempotency

• Lab: Installing Ansible, configuring inventory, and running first playbooks

Day 2 – Playbooks, Variables, and Roles

• Structuring playbooks for readability and reuse

• Variables, facts, and precedence

• Templates with Jinja2

• Handlers and conditional logic

• Roles and directory structure best practices

• Lab: Building reusable roles and parameterized playbooks

Day 3 – Managing Systems and Infrastructure

• Managing packages, services, files, and users

• Working with multiple environments (dev, test, prod)

• Error handling and debugging techniques

• Tags, loops, and advanced task control

• Introduction to automating network or cloud resources

• Lab: Automating multi-host system configuration and deployments

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

• Ansible Vault and secret management

• Writing maintainable and scalable automation

• Playbook testing and linting concepts

• Integrating Ansible into CI/CD pipelines

• Real-world automation patterns and case studies

• Lab: Capstone automation project combining roles, variables, and vault