Ansible for Dell EMC PowerMax

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

Course Summary

Ansible for Dell EMC PowerMax is an intermediate, hands-on course designed for engineers who want to confidently automate enterprise storage infrastructure using Ansible. This course focuses on storage automation workflows rather than server or network automation, with a strong emphasis on Dell EMC PowerMax systems using supported Ansible modules and collections.

Students who already understand basic Ansible concepts will deepen their knowledge of how Ansible interacts with storage platforms, how the module and collection system applies to storage automation, and why Fully Qualified Collection Names (FQCNs) are essential for building reliable, future-proof automation. The course blends day-to-day operational automation with best practices for maintainability, validation, and scale.

By the end of the course, students are comfortable designing, reading, and troubleshooting storage-focused playbooks and can confidently use Ansible to provision, modify, protect, and validate PowerMax storage resources in real environments built on Dell Technologies platforms.

Course Overview

This course builds practical, job-ready skills for automating enterprise storage with Ansible. Through guided lectures and hands-on labs, students learn how storage automation differs from server and network automation, how to manage state safely, and how to structure automation for long-term operational success.

Real-world Dell EMC PowerMax scenarios are used throughout the course, reinforcing best practices for production environments, day-2 operations, and infrastructure-as-code workflows.

Attendees

• Storage Engineers

• Infrastructure Automation Engineers

• DevOps Engineers supporting enterprise storage

• Platform and SRE teams working with SAN environments

• Python Developers supporting infrastructure automation

Areas of Study

• Ansible architecture with a storage automation focus

• Dell EMC PowerMax automation concepts and APIs

• Using Ansible collections and FQCNs for storage modules

• Storage inventories, credentials, and connection models

• Provisioning and managing volumes, storage groups, and masking views

• Writing safe, idempotent storage playbooks

• Multi-environment automation (dev, test, prod)

• Testing, validation, and rollback strategies for storage changes

• Extending Ansible with Python, modules, and ansible-runner

Course Outline

Day 1 – Ansible Foundations for Storage Automation

Getting Started with Ansible

• 💬 Lecture: Ansible architecture and storage automation use cases

• 💬 Lecture: How storage automation differs from server and network automation

• ⚙️ Lab: GitHub Codespaces as the Ansible control environment

Ansible Basics

• ⚙️ Lab: Installing and validating Ansible

• 💬 Lecture: Inventories and variables for storage automation

• ⚙️ Lab: Building an inventory for PowerMax environments

• ⚙️ Lab: Authenticating and validating connectivity to PowerMax

• 💬 Lecture: YAML essentials for storage playbooks

• ⚙️ Lab: Running a first storage automation playbook

• ⚙️ Lab: Configuring ansible.cfg for storage workflows

• ⚙️ Lab: Variables, loops, and vars files in playbooks

Day 2 – Writing Practical PowerMax Playbooks

Modules and the Ansible Module System

• 💬 Lecture: Fully Qualified Collection Names (FQCNs) and why they matter

• 💬 Lecture: Standard modules vs. vendor-specific collections

Core Storage Automation Modules

• ⚙️ Lab: Exploring PowerMax Ansible modules

• ⚙️ Lab: Gathering storage system information and facts

• ⚙️ Lab: Creating and managing volumes

• ⚙️ Lab: Modifying volume attributes safely

• ⚙️ Lab: Managing storage groups and associations

Storage Automation Patterns

• 💬 Lecture: Idempotency and safety in storage automation

• ⚙️ Lab: Conditional execution with when in storage playbooks

Day 3 – Advanced Storage Workflows, Roles, and Collections

Operational Storage Automation

• ⚙️ Lab: Automating masking views and host access

• ⚙️ Lab: Managing replication and data protection workflows

• ⚙️ Lab: Error handling in storage playbooks

• ⚙️ Lab: Rolling back storage configuration changes

• 💬 Lecture: Vendor collections and abstraction strategies

• ⚙️ Lab: Structuring reusable PowerMax playbooks

Dynamic Inventory

• 💬 Lecture: Dynamic inventory concepts for infrastructure platforms

Roles and Collections

• 💬 Lecture: Designing Ansible roles for storage automation

• ⚙️ Lab: Creating reusable storage roles

• 💬 Lecture: Extending Ansible with collections

• ⚙️ Lab: Installing, upgrading, and using collections

Day 4 – Testing, Abstraction, and Extensibility

Testing and Validation

• ⚙️ Lab: Ansible Lint for storage automation

• ⚙️ Lab: Testing roles with Molecule

• ⚙️ Lab: Assertions and validation checks for storage state

• ⚙️ Lab: Failing safely with the fail module

Templating (High-Level Overview)

• 💬 Lecture: Jinja templating concepts

• ⚙️ Lab: Using the template module for storage workflows

Authoring Plugins and Modules

• 💬 Lecture: Action plugins and module plugins

• ⚙️ Lab: Writing a simple Ansible module for storage automation

• ⚙️ Lab: Publishing a module inside a collection

Programming with Ansible and Python

• ⚙️ Lab: Using the script module

• 💬 Lecture: ansible-runner and Python integration

• ⚙️ Lab: Running Ansible programmatically with ansible-runner

Outcomes

Students who complete Ansible for Dell EMC PowerMax will be able to:

• Confidently automate Dell EMC PowerMax storage using Ansible

• Understand and apply FQCNs and the Ansible module system

• Provision, modify, and validate storage resources safely

• Build reusable, maintainable storage automation content

• Integrate storage automation into broader infrastructure workflows

• Extend Ansible using Python, modules, and collections

This course is designed so students leave comfortable automating enterprise storage with Ansible in real-world PowerMax environments, not just theoretical examples.