Chapter 1, Building a Standard Operating Environment on Linux, provides a detailed introduction to standardized operating environments, a core concept that will be referred to throughout this hands-on book, and which is essential understanding in order for you to embark on this journey.
Chapter 2, Automating Your IT Infrastructure with Ansible, provides a detailed, hands-on breakdown of an Ansible playbook, including inventories, roles, variables, and best practices for developing and maintaining playbooks; a crash course enabling you to learn just enough Ansible to begin your automation journey.
Chapter 3, Streamlining Infrastructure Management with AWX, explores, with the help of practical examples, the installation and utilization of AWX (also available as Ansible Tower) so as to build good business processes around your Ansible automation infrastructure.
Chapter 4, Deployment Methodologies, enables you to understand the various methods available in relation to large-scale deployments in Linux environments, and how to leverage these to the best advantage of the enterprise.
Chapter 5, Using Ansible to Build Virtual Machine Templates for Deployment, explores the best practices for deploying Linux by building virtual machine templates that will be deployed at scale on a hypervisor in a practical and hands-on manner.
Chapter 6, Custom Builds with PXE Booting, looks at the process of PXE booting for when the templated approach to server builds may not be possible (for example, where bare-metal servers are still being used), and how to script this to build standard server images over the network.
Chapter 7, Configuration Management with Ansible, provides practical examples of how to manage your build once it enters service, so as to ensure that consistency remains a byword without limiting innovation.
Chapter 8, Enterprise Repository Management with Pulp, looks at how to perform patching in a controlled manner to prevent inconsistencies re-entering even the most carefully standardized environment through the use of the Pulp tool.
Chapter 9, Patching with Katello, builds on our work involving the Pulp tool by introducing you to Katello, providing even more control over your repositories whilst providing a user-friendly graphical user interface.
Chapter 10, Managing Users on Linux, provides a detailed look at user account management using Ansible as the orchestration tool, along with the use of centralized authentication systems such as LDAP directories.
Chapter 11, Database Management, looks at how Ansible can be used both to automate deployments of databases, and to execute routine database management tasks, on Linux servers.
Chapter 12, Performing Routine Maintenance with Ansible, explores some of the more advanced on-going maintenance that Ansible can perform on a Linux server estate.
Chapter 13, Using CIS Benchmarks, provides an in-depth examination of the CIS server hardening benchmarks and how to apply them on Linux servers.
Chapter 14, CIS Hardening with Ansible, looks at how a security hardening policy can be rolled out across an entire estate of Linux servers in an efficient, reproducible manner with Ansible.
Chapter 15, Auditing Security Policy with OpenSCAP, provides a hands-on look at the installation and use of OpenSCAP to audit Linux servers for policy violations on an on-going basis, since security standards can be reversed by either malicious or otherwise well-meaning end users.
Chapter 16, Tips and Tricks, explores a number of tips and tricks to keep your Linux automation processes running smoothly in the face of the ever-changing demands of the enterprise.