Ansible

Ansible Zero-to-Hero

A five-tier mastery path — Foundation to Specialist — for Ansible: automate any server, network or cloud with idempotent playbooks, roles and collections, and run the Ansible Automation Platform at enterprise scale.

Foundation → Intermediate → Advanced → Expert → Specialist ~140 hours 40 of 42 lessons ready Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE EX294) · Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation (EX374)
Start the course

A complete, job-oriented path through Ansible: the agentless push architecture, inventory, ad-hoc commands and playbooks, variables and facts, conditionals, loops, handlers, Jinja2 templating, error handling, reusable roles and collections, and Ansible Vault — built from exhaustive, RHCE-grade lessons, with later tiers covering dynamic inventory, performance, testing, custom modules/plugins, Execution Environments, the Ansible Automation Platform, Event-Driven Ansible, and network/cloud/Windows/Kubernetes automation.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Understand Ansible's agentless, push-based, idempotent model and where it fits versus Terraform/Puppet/Chef
  • Write inventories, ad-hoc commands and playbooks using become and the core modules
  • Master variables and the precedence rules, facts, conditionals, loops, handlers and tags
  • Template configuration with Jinja2, build resilient plays with blocks and error handling, and encrypt secrets with Vault
  • Build and reuse roles, and consume Ansible Galaxy collections via requirements.yml
  • Be RHCE-ready and able to automate servers, networks and clouds at scale

Prerequisites

  • Basic Linux command-line literacy and SSH — no prior automation experience required
  • A control node (Linux/macOS/WSL) and one or two target hosts or containers for the hands-on labs

Who it’s for

Sysadmins and developers new to automation, engineers standardising configuration management, and people preparing for the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE EX294) or real Ansible delivery work.

Curriculum

Tier 1 · Foundation — Ansible Basics (RHCE)

Start at zero: the agentless architecture, installation and ansible.cfg, inventory, ad-hoc commands, your first playbook, and the core modules for real work.

  1. 1 Ansible Fundamentals: Architecture, the Agentless Push Model & Idempotency Junior 24 min read
  2. 2 Installing & Configuring Ansible: the Control Node, ansible.cfg & Your First Connection Junior 32 min read
  3. 3 Ansible Inventory, In Depth: Static INI & YAML, Groups, Host/Group Vars & Patterns Junior 29 min read
  4. 4 Ansible Ad-Hoc Commands & Modules: the CLI, FQCN, ansible-doc & the Module Ecosystem Junior 27 min read
  5. 5 Ansible Playbooks, In Depth: Plays, Tasks, Modules, Become & Your First Playbook Junior 32 min read
  6. 6 Ansible Core Modules for Real Work: package, service, copy, file, template, user & lineinfile Junior 32 min read

Tier 2 · Intermediate — Playbooks, Variables, Roles & Vault (RHCE)

Write real automation: variables and the precedence rules, facts, conditionals, loops, handlers and tags, Jinja2 templating, error handling, reusable roles and collections, and encrypting secrets with Vault.

  1. 7 Ansible Variables & Facts, In Depth: the 22-Level Precedence, Facts, register & set_fact Intermediate 29 min read
  2. 8 Ansible Conditionals, Loops, Handlers & Tags, In Depth Intermediate 27 min read
  3. 9 Ansible Jinja2 Templating, In Depth: the template Module, Filters, Tests & Lookups Intermediate 30 min read
  4. 10 Ansible Error Handling, In Depth: Blocks, rescue/always, failed_when, changed_when & ignore_errors Intermediate 32 min read
  5. 11 Ansible Roles & Collections, In Depth: Structure, Dependencies, Galaxy & requirements.yml Intermediate 32 min read
  6. 12 Ansible Vault, In Depth: Encrypting Secrets, Vault IDs, Inline Vars & Pipeline Integration Intermediate 31 min read

Tier 3 · Advanced — Debugging, Scale, Plugins, Testing & AAP (EX374)

Move beyond the basics: debug and tune at fleet scale, orchestrate rolling updates, drive dynamic inventory across clouds, extend Ansible with plugins and custom modules, gate everything behind ansible-lint and Molecule, package roles into Execution Environments, and run the Ansible Automation Platform with Controller, Mesh, Hub and Event-Driven Ansible.

  1. 13 Debugging Ansible, In Depth: Check Mode, --diff, the Debugger, Verbosity & ansible-console Advanced 34 min read
  2. 14 Tuning Ansible for Speed & Scale, In Depth: Pipelining, Forks, Fact Caching, Async & Mitogen Advanced 31 min read
  3. 15 Ansible Delegation, Strategies & Rolling Updates, In Depth: delegate_to, run_once, serial & free Advanced 33 min read
  4. 16 Dynamic Inventory and Secure Secrets for Ansible at Cloud Scale coming soon
  5. 17 Ansible Plugins, In Depth: Filter, Lookup, Callback, Connection & the Whole Plugin System Advanced 32 min read
  6. 18 Writing Custom Ansible Modules, In Depth: AnsibleModule, argument_spec, Idempotency & check_mode Advanced 34 min read
  7. 19 Linting & Testing Ansible, In Depth: ansible-lint, yamllint, Idempotence & CI Gates Advanced 34 min read
  8. 20 Engineering Idempotent Ansible Collections with Molecule Testing coming soon
  9. 21 Building Ansible Collections & Execution Environments, In Depth: galaxy.yml, ansible-builder & EEs Advanced 34 min read
  10. 22 Ansible Automation Platform Architecture, In Depth: Controller, Automation Hub & Event-Driven Ansible Advanced 35 min read

Tier 4 · Expert — Network, Cloud, Container, Database, VMware & Hybrid Automation

Drive every layer of the modern stack from one playbook: network OSes (Cisco/Juniper/Arista), AWS/Azure/GCP, Windows over WinRM/Kerberos, Kubernetes via kubernetes.core + Helm, containers (Docker/Podman), Postgres/MySQL/MongoDB, VMware vSphere/NSX-T, and the AAP workflows that orchestrate them all across hybrid private + multi-cloud estates.

  1. 23 Ansible Network Automation, In Depth: Cisco IOS/NX-OS, Juniper Junos & Arista EOS with ansible.netcommon Expert 32 min read
  2. 24 Ansible for AWS, In Depth: amazon.aws & community.aws, IAM Auth, Multi-Account & Tagging at Scale Expert 31 min read
  3. 25 Ansible for Azure, In Depth: azure.azcollection, Service Principal vs Managed Identity, Multi-Subscription & Tag-Driven Inventory Expert 30 min read
  4. 26 Ansible for GCP, In Depth: google.cloud, Application Default Credentials, Workload Identity Federation & Project-Scoped Automation Expert 29 min read
  5. 27 Ansible for Windows, In Depth: WinRM, Kerberos, ansible.windows, community.windows & win_dsc 22 min read
  6. 28 Ansible for Kubernetes, In Depth: kubernetes.core, k8s, Helm Charts, Manifests & Operator-Style Workflows 19 min read
  7. 29 Ansible for Containers, In Depth: community.docker, containers.podman, Compose, Image Builds & Registry Lifecycle 18 min read
  8. 30 Ansible for Databases, In Depth: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB Lifecycle, Replication, Backups & Schema Management 18 min read
  9. 31 Ansible for VMware vSphere & NSX, In Depth: community.vmware, vCenter Automation, VM Templates & Software-Defined Networking 20 min read
  10. 32 Ansible for Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Orchestration: Coordinating On-Prem, AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes from a Single Workflow 20 min read

Tier 5 · Specialist — Compliance, DR, Migrations, Air-Gap, SAP, Edge, ITSM, Backup, DBs & Observability

Run regulated, audited, mission-critical Ansible at enterprise scale: STIG/CIS hardening with OpenSCAP and signed evidence, hybrid disaster recovery and DR drills, P2V/V2V and RHEL major upgrades for fleets, three air-gap archetypes (soft, sneakernet, data-diode), SAP HANA + NetWeaver via the redhat.sap collections, edge/IoT fleet management at scale (pull-mode, bootc, k3s+fleet), ServiceNow ITSM gating with CHG-ticket-as-prerequisite and Slack/Teams ChatOps, backup automation (Veeam/Rubrik/Cohesity/Commvault) with object-lock immutability and tested restore drills, zero-downtime database migrations (online DDL, blue-green, expand-contract), and the observability capstone that closes the loop with Prometheus + Loki + Tempo + OTel + AAP metrics.

  1. 33 Ansible for Security Compliance, In Depth: STIG, CIS Benchmarks, OpenSCAP & Policy-as-Code 26 min read
  2. 34 Ansible for Disaster Recovery, In Depth: RPO/RTO Engineering, Site Failover & Cross-Region Runbooks 26 min read
  3. 35 Ansible for OS Migrations, In Depth: P2V, V2V, RHEL Major-Version Upgrades & Windows Server Upgrades 24 min read
  4. 36 Ansible in Air-Gapped Environments, In Depth: Sealed Networks, Internal Mirrors, Signed EEs & Cross-Boundary Workflows 21 min read
  5. 37 Ansible for SAP, In Depth: HANA System Replication, NetWeaver, Kernel Patching & Landscape Automation 22 min read
  6. 38 Ansible for Edge & IoT Fleet Management, In Depth: Pull-Mode, Signed Manifests, Constrained Devices & Intermittent Networks 20 min read
  7. 39 Ansible × ITSM & ChatOps, In Depth: ServiceNow CMDB Inventory, Change-Gated Job Templates, Event-Driven Approvals & Slack/Teams Bidirectional Flows 25 min read
  8. 40 Ansible × Backup & Storage Automation, In Depth: Veeam, Rubrik, Commvault, NetApp ONTAP, Pure & the 3-2-1-1-0 Rule as Code 21 min read
  9. 41 Ansible × Database Migrations & Zero-Downtime Schema Changes, In Depth: Online DDL, Blue-Green Cutovers, Logical Replication & Expand-Contract 23 min read
  10. 42 Ansible × Observability Capstone, In Depth: Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, OpenTelemetry, AAP Metrics & the Closed Automation Feedback Loop 22 min read
All courses