Book Image

Mastering Ansible, 4th Edition - Fourth Edition

By : James Freeman, Jesse Keating
Book Image

Mastering Ansible, 4th Edition - Fourth Edition

By: James Freeman, Jesse Keating

Overview of this book

Ansible is a modern, YAML-based automation tool (built on top of Python, one of the world’s most popular programming languages) with a massive and ever-growing user base. Its popularity and Python underpinnings make it essential learning for all in the DevOps space. This fourth edition of Mastering Ansible provides complete coverage of Ansible automation, from the design and architecture of the tool and basic automation with playbooks to writing and debugging your own Python-based extensions. You'll learn how to build automation workflows with Ansible’s extensive built-in library of collections, modules, and plugins. You'll then look at extending the modules and plugins with Python-based code and even build your own collections — ultimately learning how to give back to the Ansible community. By the end of this Ansible book, you'll be confident in all aspects of Ansible automation, from the fundamentals of playbook design to getting under the hood and extending and adapting Ansible to solve new automation challenges.

Related Content you might be interested in

Current Title:

Small book image
Mastering Ansible, 4th Edition - Fourth Edition
James Freeman | Jesse Keating
Dec, 2021 | 540 pages
Small book image
Practical Ansible
Fabio Alessandro Locati | Daniel Oh | James Freeman
Sep, 2023 | 420 pages
Small book image
Practical Ansible 2
Fabio Alessandro Locati | Daniel Oh | James Freeman
Jun, 2020 | 410 pages
Small book image
Ansible for Real-Life Automation
Gineesh Madapparambath
Sep, 2022 | 480 pages
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Code in Action
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Share Your Thoughts
1
Section 1: Ansible Overview and Fundamentals
Section 1: Ansible Overview and Fundamentals
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: The System Architecture and Design of Ansible
Chapter 1: The System Architecture and Design of Ansible
Technical requirements
Ansible versions and configurations
Inventory parsing and data sources
Playbook parsing
Module transport and execution
Variable types and location
Accessing external data
Variable precedence
Summary
Questions
3
Chapter 2: Migrating from Earlier Ansible Versions
Chapter 2: Migrating from Earlier Ansible Versions
Technical requirements
Changes in Ansible 4.3
Upgrading from earlier Ansible installations
Installing Ansible from scratch
What are Ansible Collections?
Installing additional modules with ansible-galaxy
How to port legacy playbooks to Ansible 4.3 (a primer)
Summary
Questions
4
Chapter 3: Protecting Your Secrets with Ansible
Chapter 3: Protecting Your Secrets with Ansible
Technical requirements
Encrypting data at rest
Creating and editing encrypted files
Executing ansible-playbook with encrypted files
Mixing encrypted data with plain YAML
Protecting secrets while operating
Summary
Questions
5
Chapter 4: Ansible and Windows – Not Just for Linux
Chapter 4: Ansible and Windows – Not Just for Linux
Technical requirements
Running Ansible from Windows
Setting up Windows hosts for Ansible control using WinRM
Handling Windows authentication and encryption when using WinRM
Setting up Windows hosts for Ansible control using OpenSSH
Automating Windows tasks with Ansible
Summary
Questions
6
Chapter 5: Infrastructure Management for Enterprises with AWX
Chapter 5: Infrastructure Management for Enterprises with AWX
Technical requirements
Getting AWX up and running
Integrating AWX with your first playbook
Going beyond the basics
Summary
Questions
7
Section 2: Writing and Troubleshooting Ansible Playbooks
Section 2: Writing and Troubleshooting Ansible Playbooks
8
Chapter 6: Unlocking the Power of Jinja2 Templates
Chapter 6: Unlocking the Power of Jinja2 Templates
Technical requirements
Control structures
Data manipulation
Comparing values
Summary
Questions
9
Chapter 7: Controlling Task Conditions
Chapter 7: Controlling Task Conditions
Technical requirements
Defining a failure
Defining a change
Error recovery
Iterative tasks with loops
Summary
Questions
10
Chapter 8: Composing Reusable Ansible Content with Roles
Chapter 8: Composing Reusable Ansible Content with Roles
Technical requirements
Task, handler, variable, and playbook inclusion concepts
Roles (structures, defaults, and dependencies)
Summary
Questions
11
Chapter 9: Troubleshooting Ansible
Chapter 9: Troubleshooting Ansible
Technical requirements
Playbook logging and verbosity
Variable introspection
Debugging code execution
Summary
Questions
12
Chapter 10: Extending Ansible
Chapter 10: Extending Ansible
Technical requirements
Developing modules
Developing plugins
Developing dynamic inventory plugins
Contributing to the Ansible project
Summary
Questions
13
Section 3: Orchestration with Ansible
Section 3: Orchestration with Ansible
14
Chapter 11: Minimizing Downtime with Rolling Deployments
Chapter 11: Minimizing Downtime with Rolling Deployments
Technical requirements
In-place upgrades
Expanding and contracting
Failing fast
Minimizing disruptions
Serializing single tasks
Summary
Questions
15
Chapter 12: Infrastructure Provisioning
Chapter 12: Infrastructure Provisioning
Technical requirements
Managing an on-premise cloud infrastructure
Managing a public cloud infrastructure
Interacting with Docker containers
Building containers with Ansible
Summary
Questions
16
Chapter 13: Network Automation
Chapter 13: Network Automation
Technical requirements
Ansible for network management
Handling multiple device types
Working with the cli_command module
Configuring Arista EOS switches with Ansible
Configuring Cumulus Networks switches with Ansible
Best practices
Summary
Questions
Why subscribe?
17
Other Books You May Enjoy
Other Books You May Enjoy
Packt is searching for authors like you
Share Your Thoughts

To get the most out of this book

To follow the examples provided in this book, you will need access to a computer platform capable of running Ansible. Currently, Ansible can be run on any machine with Python 2.7 or Python 3 (versions 3.5 and higher) installed (Windows is supported for the control machine, but only through a Linux distribution running in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) layer available on newer versions—see Chapter 4, Ansible and Windows – Not Just for Linux, for details). Operating systems supported include (but are not limited to) Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, macOS, and FreeBSD.

This book uses the Ansible 4.x.x series release. Ansible installation instructions can be found at https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/installation_guide/intro_installation.html.

Some examples use Docker version 20.10.8. Docker installation instructions can be found at https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/.

A handful of examples in this book make use of accounts on both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. More information about these services may be found at https://aws.amazon.com/ and https://azure.microsoft.com, respectively. We also delve into the management of OpenStack with Ansible, and the examples in this book were tested against a single all-in-one instance of DevStack as per the instructions found here: https://docs.openstack.org/devstack/latest/.

Finally, Chapter 13, Network Automation, makes use of Arista vEOS 4.26.2F and Cumulus VX version 4.4.0 in the example code—please see here for more information: https://www.arista.com/en/support/software-download and https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/networking/ethernet-switching/cumulus-vx/. If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book's GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Previous Section
Next Section