Managing Enterprise Automation with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Training Course

Installing the Ansible Automation Platform

• The functions of the platform gateway, automation controller, private automation hub, and the Event-Driven Ansible controller.
• Execution environments and the integration of automation mesh within the platform architecture.
• Deployment strategies and enterprise-scale topologies, covering containerised, RPM-based, and OpenShift Operator methods.
• Preparing the installer inventory and finalising the installation according to the chosen deployment method.
• Initial platform access, subscription setup, and navigating the unified user interface.

Administering Users and Access Rights

• Establishing organisations, teams, and user accounts.
• Comprehending local accounts and centralised authentication mechanisms such as LDAP.
• Implementing built-in roles, resource permissions, and permission inheritance structures.
• Regulating access to platform resources and content within the private automation hub.

Managing Inventories and Machine Credentials

• Creating static inventories, defining hosts and groups, and associating variables.
• Setting up machine credentials using SSH keys, passwords, and privilege-escalation parameters.
• Understanding credential types and their application during job execution.
• Controlling which users can administer or utilise inventories and credentials.
• Verifying connectivity to managed hosts using ad hoc commands.

Managing Projects and Executing Jobs

• Linking projects to Git repositories and configuring source control credentials.
• Selecting branches and setting project update policies, including the update-on-launch feature.
• Utilising execution environments and content distributed via the private automation hub.
• Creating job templates and executing playbooks against managed hosts.
• Analyzing job output, execution events, and the activity stream.

Leveraging Advanced Job Template Capabilities

• Providing job inputs via extra variables, launch prompts, and surveys.
• Configuring host limits, fork counts, verbosity levels, job slicing, and fact caching.
• Scheduling automated job runs.
• Setting up notifications for job initiation, completion, and failure.

Building Automation Workflows

• Creating workflow job templates using the visual workflow editor.
• Connecting jobs through success, failure, and always-execution branches.
• Configuring converging paths and recovery steps for failed operations.
• Incorporating approval nodes and managing approval timeouts.
• Launching and scheduling workflows, and configuring associated notifications.

Managing Advanced Inventories

• Importing inventory data from projects hosted in Git repositories.
• Connecting dynamic inventory sources via inventory plug-ins.
• Scheduling inventory synchronisation and refreshing sources prior to execution.
• Creating constructed inventories by merging existing sources and filtering hosts using variables and patterns.

Automating Platform Configuration

• Managing configuration as code using platform content collections, such as ansible.controller, ansible.platform, and ansible.hub.
• Utilising REST APIs, authentication tokens, and API calls from within playbooks.
• Automating the creation and configuration of organisations, projects, and job templates.
• Storing configuration playbooks in Git and triggering automation via webhooks.

Maintaining and Troubleshooting the Platform

• Managing services and identifying logs corresponding to the selected deployment method.
• Diagnosing common platform and job execution errors.
• Using management jobs to maintain job history and activity stream data.
• Planning and executing backup and restoration procedures.
• Reviewing upgrade considerations and managing subscriptions.

Scaling Deployments with Automation Mesh

• Understanding the roles of control, execution, and hop nodes, considering hybrid-node behaviour where relevant to the deployment model.
• Connecting nodes via Receptor and designing mesh routes for remote or segmented networks.
• Managing instance groups, container groups, and execution capacity.
• Applying high-availability principles to platform components, databases, and load balancing.
• Assessing the impact of node or service failures on automation execution and recovery.

Comprehensive Platform Administration Review

• Configuring private automation hub content according to a provided specification.
• Establishing an organisation with users, teams, inventories, credentials, and Git projects.
• Creating job templates and workflows to satisfy specific operational requirements.
• Reviewing access permissions, content availability, and automation execution across the configured environment.