Managing Enterprise Automation with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Training Course

Installing Ansible Automation Platform

• The functions of the platform gateway, Automation Controller, private Automation Hub, and Event-Driven Ansible controller.
• Execution environments and the role of automation mesh within the platform architecture.
• Deployment strategies and enterprise topologies, covering containerized, RPM-based, and OpenShift Operator methods.
• Preparing the installer inventory and finalizing installation based on the chosen deployment method.
• Initial platform access, subscription setup, and navigating the unified user interface.

Managing users and access permissions

• Establishing organizations, teams, and user accounts.
• Understanding local account management and centralized authentication options such as LDAP.
• Implementing built-in roles, resource-specific permissions, and permission inheritance.
• Controlling access to platform resources and private Automation Hub content.

Managing inventories and machine credentials

• Creating static inventories, defining hosts and groups, and associating variables.
• Configuring machine credentials using SSH keys, passwords, and privilege escalation settings.
• Understanding credential types and their application during job execution.
• Restricting administrative and usage access to inventories and credentials.
• Verifying connectivity to managed hosts using ad hoc commands.

Managing projects and launching jobs

• Linking projects to Git repositories and configuring source control credentials.
• Selecting branches and setting up project updates, including update-on-launch behaviors.
• Utilizing execution environments and content delivered via the private Automation Hub.
• Developing job templates and executing playbooks against managed hosts.
• Analyzing job output, execution events, and the activity stream.

Using advanced job template features

• Passing job inputs via extra variables, launch prompts, and surveys.
• Configuring host limits, forks, verbosity levels, job slicing, and fact caching.
• Scheduling automated jobs.
• Setting up notifications for job initiation, completion, and failures.

Constructing automation workflows

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

Managing advanced inventories

• Importing inventory data from projects stored in Git repositories.
• Connecting to dynamic inventory sources using inventory plugins.
• Scheduling inventory synchronization and refreshing sources prior to execution.
• Building constructed inventories by merging existing sources and filtering hosts using variables and patterns.

Automating platform configuration

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

Maintaining and troubleshooting the platform

• Managing services and locating logs relevant to the selected deployment method.
• Diagnosing common platform and job execution errors.
• Utilizing management jobs to prune job history and activity stream data.
• Planning and executing backup and restoration procedures.
• Reviewing upgrade considerations and subscription management strategies.

Scaling deployments with automation mesh

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

Comprehensive platform administration review

• Configuring private Automation Hub content according to a provided specification.
• Setting up an organization with users, teams, inventories, credentials, and Git projects.
• Creating job templates and workflows that satisfy defined operational requirements.
• Reviewing access permissions, content availability, and automation execution across the configured environment.