Ansible for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Technical Workshop
IMPORTANT TO NOTE
This is the extended version of this workshop (~6 hours). For the shorter 90 minute session please 🔬 click here
If you’re new to Ansible Automation, this workshop consists of two parts: 1) starting with the basic fundamentals and 2) applying what you’ve learned to implement Ansible automation controller to your enterprise use cases. You’ll start off by writing your first Ansible playbook, work on Jinja templates, and implement higher-level Ansible roles. Next you’ll get started on automation controller, understand inventory and credential management, projects, job templates, surveys, workflows and more.
After finishing this lab you are ready to start using Ansible for your automation requirements.
This is documentation for Ansible Automation Platform 2.6
IMPORTANT TO NOTE: This is NOT a deep dive, in the weeds, advanced workshop — it’s an introduction.
NOTE: This content has been updated to reflect the latest changes from the Ansible Automation Platform 2.0 release. Learn more about how the 2.0 release impacts this workshop or watch the video walkthrough.
Workshop Resources
| Resource | Link |
|---|---|
| Workshop content and exercises | rhpds.github.io/zt-ans-bu-rhel |
| Follow-up handouts/assets | Follow-up handouts/assets |
| Post-event survey | Post-event survey |
| Certain registration page & promotional email copy | Registration page & promotional email copy |
| Presenter instructions and guide | Presenter instructions and guide |
| Certain event banners | Event banners (Google Drive) |
Who is this workshop best for?
This workshop is intended for people who want to learn the basics of Ansible Automation, understand how they work and how they can be used to automate basic tasks. In addition, the instructor will provide information on the differentiation between the upstream project and the product offering from Red Hat. Join if you never tried Red Hat Ansible Automation.
Target audience
DevOps engineers, operations engineers, systems engineers, release engineers, system administrators, developers, operations staff, network engineers, security professionals, and anyone interested in IT automation.
Given the current resources within the Ansible Business Unit for supporting Ansible Automation Workshops, we are restricting lab size to 49 seats (48 student workbench + 1 instructor workbench) to improve supportability and resiliency of workshops ordered through the RHPDS platform. If you need more than 49 seats, you may order multiple quantities of the workshop.
Attendee Prerequisites
- A basic understanding of working with Linux systems
- Attendees must bring/use a laptop with ADMIN rights and the ability to SSH to a lab environment hosted in a public cloud
- Must bring/use a laptop with Chrome 73+, Firefox 60+, Edge 40+, or Safari 12+ installed
There is no student prep work required prior to the workshop.
Presentation Deck
- PDF - For everyone
- Google Slides - For Red Hat employees
Lab provisioner
This lab environment is available via the Red Hat Demo Platform under the Ansible for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workshop catalog item.
Lab Index (Estimate total time ⏱️ 6 hours)
Section 1 — Command-line Ansible
| Activity | Link | Estimated Time |
|---|---|---|
| Slides: Introduction + Workshop Brief | 🖥️ Google Slides | ⏱️ 20 minutes |
| Exercise 1.1 — Writing Your First Playbook | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 25 minutes |
| Exercise 1.2 — Using Variables | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 20 minutes |
| Exercise 1.3 — Conditionals, Handlers and Loops | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 20 minutes |
| Exercise 1.4 — Templates | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
| ☕ Break | ⏱️ 15 minutes | |
| Exercise 1.5 — Collections | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
| Exercise 1.6 — Ansible Navigator & Execution Environments | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 20 minutes |
| Exercise 1.7 — Debugging and Error Handling | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 20 minutes |
☕ Break — ⏱️ 15 minutes
Section 2 — Ansible Automation Platform
| Activity | Link | Estimated Time |
|---|---|---|
| Slides: Ansible Automation Platform Introduction | 🖥️ Google Slides | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
| Exercise 2.1 — Introduction to Automation Platform | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
| Exercise 2.2 — Inventories and Credentials | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
| Exercise 2.3 — Projects & Job Templates | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 20 minutes |
| Exercise 2.4 — Surveys | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 20 minutes |
| ☕ Break | ⏱️ 15 minutes | |
| Exercise 2.5 — Role-based Access Control | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
| Exercise 2.6 — Workflows | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 20 minutes |
| Exercise 2.7 — System Roles | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
| Exercise 2.8 — Wrap Up | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 25 minutes |
| Slides: Close Out & Q&A | 🖥️ Google Slides | ⏱️ 10 minutes |
Demos
Demos are intended for effectively demonstrating Ansible capabilities with prescriptive guides on the Ansible Automation Workshop infrastructure. See the workshops repository for demo content.
Learning Resources
Documentation
Going Further
Additional material for Ansible and RHEL Automation
| Title | Type | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Ansible Automation Platform Self-Paced Labs | Interactive labs | 🔬 Self-Paced Labs |
| Red Hat Training and Certification for AAP | Training | 📖 Training Catalog |
| Get a Trial Subscription for AAP | Trial | 🧪 Start Trial |
Ansible Workshop
This is an official Ansible Workshop
This workshop is maintained by the Red Hat Ansible Technical Marketing Team.
Please open an issues on Github
