What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introduction to Ansible Automation Platform, is an introduction to the AAP. It goes over the details of the different services that make up the platform and their upstream counterparts. In addition, this chapter goes into detail about the various methods used in this book and how to use execution environments.
Chapter 2, Installing Ansible Automation Platform, covers the installation of AAP on servers. This covers planning and scoping an installation, how to install Galaxy NG on a machine, how to backup and restore an installation, and a brief overview of troubleshooting installations.
Chapter 3, Installing Ansible Automation Platform on OpenShift, explores the installation of AAP with operators on an OpenShift cluster. This includes installing AWX on minikube in a development setup, installing the Red Hat OpenShift Local (formerly, CodeReady Containers) service for development testing, and how to backup and restore installations on OpenShift.
Chapter 4, Configuring Settings and Authentication, goes into detail about configuring automation controller settings, Red Hat Single Sign-On server configuration, integrating Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) from Microsoft AD, how to add users and teams to the Automation controller without LDAP, and how to add users and groups to the Automation Hub without an identity provider.
Chapter 5, Configuring the Basics after Installation, deals with the basics of creating organizations, creating and configuring credential types and credentials, and exporting configurations from the automation controller.
Chapter 6, Configuring Role-Based Access Control, focuses on configuring role-based access control settings for the automation controller and Automation Hub. This involves setting various permissions for all objects and types in the AAP.
Chapter 7, Creating Inventory, and Other Inventory Pieces, covers creating and configuring inventories, and using and configuring inventory sources. It also includes an overview of popular inventory plugins, the use of inventory plugins from collections, and goes into detail about creating custom inventory plugins.
Chapter 8, Creating Execution Environments, looks at what execution environments (EEs) are, how they are used, how to create and modify your own EE, and how to use roles to create EEs using CaC.
Chapter 9, Automation Hub Management, delves into Automation Hub management. This includes going into detail about different content sources, how to set up and synchronize certified and community collections, publishing custom collections, managing execution environments and registries, and connecting the Automation Hub to the automation controller.
Chapter 10, Creating Job Templates and Workflows, goes into detail about creating projects, job templates, and workflows. It also goes into detail about using surveys with job templates and workflows, workflow creation using modules and roles, and how to utilize job slicing.
Chapter 11, Creating Advanced Workflows and Jobs, goes into detail about designing playbooks and jobs in a workflow to take advantage of workflows. This includes creating nodes that contain information so that users do not need to hunt in a playbook, and using approval nodes to gain user input to allow a workflow to continue. Additionally, this chapter will go into detail about creating and using notifications.
Chapter 12, Using CI/CD to Interact with Automation Controller, is all about using continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) and Webhooks. This goes into detail about maintaining AAP with CaC with CI/CD, how to launch jobs, monitoring and interacting with workflows, how to launch ad hoc commands, and the use of backup and restore for the AAP using CI/CD.
Chapter 13, Integration with Other Services, focuses on integration with other services, such as Red Hat Insights, Splunk, and Prometheus. These different services each focus on a different aspect of information generated by the platform. This includes job and event logs and metrics. Having a searchable log of this information can be invaluable for detecting problems and trends as your automation grows.
Chapter 14, Automating at Scale with Automation Mesh, teaches you how to automate at scale with automation mesh. This chapter goes into detail about using instance groups to set where automation runs, the use of different node types to scale AAP, and how to design an installation that works across disparate networks.
Chapter 15, Using Automation Services Catalog, explores what exactly the Automation services catalog is, how to configure the various parts of it, how to create orders and products for users to consume, and how to use approval workflows.