Mastering Ansible: Effectively automate configuration management and deployment challenges with Ansible 2.7, 3rd Edition

Design, develop, and solve real-world automation and orchestration problems by unlocking the automation capabilities of Ansible.

Key Features

• Tackle complex automation challenges with the newly added features in Ansible 2.7

Book Description

Automation is essential for success in the modern world of DevOps. Ansible provides a simple, yet powerful, automation engine for tackling complex automation challenges.

This book will take you on a journey that will help you exploit the latest version's advanced features to help you increase efficiency and accomplish complex orchestrations. This book will help you understand how Ansible 2.7 works at a fundamental level and will also teach you to leverage its advanced capabilities. Throughout this book, you will learn how to encrypt Ansible content at rest and decrypt data at runtime. Next, this book will act as an ideal resource to help you master the advanced features and capabilities required to tackle complex automation challenges. Later, it will walk you through workflows, use cases, orchestrations, troubleshooting, and Ansible extensions. Lastly, you will examine and debug Ansible operations, helping you to understand and resolve issues.

By the end of the book, you will be able to unlock the true power of the Ansible automation engine and tackle complex, real- world actions with ease.

What you will learn

• Gain an in-depth understanding of how Ansible works under the hood
• Fully automate Ansible playbook executions with encrypted data
• Access and manipulate variable data within playbooks
• Use blocks to perform failure recovery or cleanup
• Explore the Playbook debugger and the Ansible Console
• Troubleshoot unexpected behavior effectively
• Work with cloud infrastructure providers and container systems
• Develop custom modules, plugins, and dynamic inventory sources

Who this book is for

This book is for Ansible developers and operators who have an understanding of its core elements and applications but are now looking to enhance their skills in applying automation using Ansible.

Table of Contents

1. The System Architecture and Design of Ansible
2. Protecting Your Secrets with Ansible
3. Infrastructure Management for Enterprises with AWX
4. Ansible and Windows - Not Just for Linux
5. Unlocking the Power of Jinja2 Templates
6. Controlling Task Conditions
7. Composing Reusable Ansible Content with Roles
8. Troubleshooting Ansible
9. Extending Ansible
10. Minimizing Downtime with Rolling Updates
11. Infrastructure Provisioning
12. Network Automation