Explore Ansible Automation Platform and understand how the different pieces interact to standardize and scale automation Key Features: Curated by a senior consultant at Red Hat with real-world examples to maximize use of Ansible Automation Platform Use roles and modules to create interactive playbooks in Ansible Automation Platform Discover best practices for simplifying management of Ansible Automation Platform Book Description: While you can use any automation software to simplify task automation, scaling automation to suit your growing business needs becomes difficult using only a command-line tool. Ansible Automation Platform standardizes how automation is deployed, initiated, delegated, and audited, and this comprehensive guide shows you how you can simplify and scale its management. The book starts by taking you through the ways to get Ansible Automation Platform installed, their pros and cons, and the initial configuration. You'll learn about each object in the platform, how it interacts with other objects, as well as best practices for defining and managing objects to save time. You'll see how to maintain the created pieces with infrastructure as code. As you advance, you'll monitor workflows with CI/CD playbooks and understand how Ansible Automation Platform integrates with many other services such as GitLab and GitHub. By the end of this book, you'll have worked through real-world examples to make the most of the platform while learning how to manipulate, manage, and deploy any playbook to Ansible Automation Platform. What You Will Learn: Get the hang of different parts of Ansible Automation Platform and their maintenance Back up and restore an installation of Ansible Automation Platform Launch and configure basic and advanced workflows and jobs Create your own execution environment using CI/CD pipelines Interact with Git, Red Hat Authentication Server, and logging services Integrate the Automation controller with services catalog Use Automation Mesh to scale Automation Controller Who this book is for: This book is for IT administrators, DevOps engineers, cloud engineers, and automation engineers seeking to understand and maintain the controller part of Ansible Automation Platform. If you have basic knowledge of Ansible, can set up a virtual machine, or have OpenShift experience, and want to know more about scaling Ansible, this book is for you.
Author(s): Sean Sullivan
Publisher:
Year: 2022
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contributors
Table of Contents
Preface
Part 1: Getting Ansible Automation Platform Up and Running
Chapter 1: Introduction to Ansible Automation Platform
Technical requirements
AAP overview
Automation controller (Red Hat Ansible Tower)
Automation execution environments
Automation hub
Automation services catalog
Red Hat Insights for Red Hat AAP
Ansible content tools
Key differences between upstream and official Red Hat products
Overview of the methods that will be used in this book
Introduction to the roles and modules that will be used in this book
The manual approach
Using Ansible to manage the configuration
Execution environments and Ansible Navigator
Summary
Chapter 2: Installing Ansible Automation Platform
Technical requirements
Getting a trial version of Ansible Automation Platform
Planning an installation on a machine
The distinct types of nodes
High availability
Installation methods
Setting variables for the automation mesh and node types
Installing Galaxy NG on a machine
Backing up and restoring the installation
Backing up
Secret key redistribution
Restore
Issues that can arise when using the installer
Summary
Chapter 3: Installing Ansible Automation Platform on OpenShift
Technical requirements
Installing AWX on minikube
Installing CodeReady Containers
Installing the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform operator on an OpenShift cluster
Exploring the Automation controller and Automation hub on OpenShift
Learning about Automation controller specifics on OpenShift
Secret fields
Learning Automation hub specifics
Backing up and restoring a backup for Automation hub and the Automation controller on OpenShift
Summary
Chapter 4: Configuring Settings and Authentication
Technical requirements
Getting a trial version of Ansible Automation Platform
Configuring Automation controller settings
Registering the Automation controller with a subscription manifest
Updating Automation controller settings
Configuring the RH-SSO server SAML
Getting values from a Windows AD server
Configuring the RH-SSO server
Setting Automation hub administrators with RH-SSO
Integrating the Automation controller with RH-SSO
Troubleshooting the SAML configuration
Integrating LDAP with Microsoft AD
Automation controller LDAP bind and user variables
Automation controller LDAP group variables
Automation controller LDAP miscellaneous variables
Troubleshooting
Setting up other authentication methods
Adding users and teams to the Automation controller without an IdP
Adding users and groups to the Automation hub without an IdP
Summary
Part 2: Configuring AAP
Chapter 5: Configuring the Basics after Installation
Technical requirements
Dashboard introduction
Creating organizations – the root of all objects in the controller
Creating an organization using the GUI
Creating an organization using modules
Creating an organization using roles
Using credential types and credentials
Credential types
Credentials
The creation of credential types and credentials using various methods
Importing and exporting objects into the controller
Summary
Chapter 6: Configuring Role-Based Access Control
Technical requirements
Assigning RBAC to the Automation controller
Approval permissions for workflows
Practically using the RBACs
Assigning RBAC to the Automation hub
Setting roles in the GUI
Practically using the RBACs
Summary
Chapter 7: Creating Inventory, and Other Inventory Pieces
Technical requirements
Creating an inventory
Creating and populating an inventory using the GUI
Creating and populating an inventory with modules
Creating and populating an inventory with roles
Using inventory sources
Creating and synchronizing an inventory source with the GUI
Creating and populating an inventory source with modules
Creating and populating an inventory source with roles
Using base Ansible inventory plugins
Pre-installed Ansible plugins
Using built-in Automation controller inventory plugins
AWS EC2
GCE
Microsoft ARM
VMware vCenter
Red Hat Satellite 6
Red Hat Insights
OpenStack
RHV
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Using other popular inventory plugins
Overview of using custom inventory plugins
NetBox
ServiceNow
Writing your own inventory plugin
Ansible configuration changes
Custom inventory plugin script
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 8: Creating Execution Environments
Technical requirements
What are execution environments?
What is inside the execution environment?
Seeing what is in a specific execution environment
How to use execution environments
Running a simple job in an execution environment
Creating and modifying your execution environments
Creating a definition file
Creating the execution environment
Using roles to create execution environments
Creating an execution environment using the builder role
Converting Python virtual environments from older Tower installations
Summary
Chapter 9: Automation Hub Management
Technical requirements
Overview of Automation hub and its content sources
Synchronizing certified and community collections
Publishing custom collections
Managing execution environments and registries
How to add a remote EE registry
How to synchronize an EE registry
How to add a remote or local EE to Automation hub
Best practices for maintaining execution environments
Connecting Automation hub to the Automation controller
Using credentials to pull collections
Adding execution environments to the Automation controller with the GUI
Adding execution environments to the Automation controller with modules
Adding execution environments to the Automation controller with roles
Summary
Chapter 10: Creating Job Templates and Workflows
Technical requirements
Creating projects
The structure and files of a playbook directory
Project options on the Automation controller and creating projects in the GUI
Creating projects on the Automation controller using modules
Creating projects on the Automation controller using roles
Creating job templates
Job template options for the GUI, modules, and roles
Creating job templates using the GUI
Creating job templates using modules
Creating job templates using roles
Surveys for job templates and workflows, and how to use them
Survey definitions
Using surveys
Creating workflows
Workflow basics
Workflow job template options for the GUI, modules, and roles
Workflow node list options and creation in the GUI
Creating workflows using roles
Using job slicing to slice a job template into multiple jobs
Summary
Part 3: Extending Ansible Tower
Chapter 11: Creating Advanced Workflows and Jobs
Technical requirements
Creating advanced workflows
Using workflow artifacts and variables
Creating nodes for user review
Using workflow approval nodes
Marking a workflow as failed or successful
Using and configuring notifications
Understanding the basics of notifications
Notification options for the GUI, modules, and roles
Creating a notification template using modules
Creating a notification template using roles
Adding notifications to activities
Summary
Chapter 12: Using CI/CD to Interact with Automation Controller
Technical requirements
A brief introduction to CI/CD pipelines and webhooks
Maintaining an Automation controller and hub through infrastructure as code paired with CI/CD
Launching jobs, monitoring, and interacting with workflows using CI/CD playbooks
Ad hoc commands
Backup and restore options using CI/CD playbook
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 13: Integration with Other Services
Technical requirements
Logging services
Creating an event collector on Splunk
Connecting the Automation controller to Splunk
Troubleshooting with the log aggregator
Splunk search queries
Splunk dashboards
Automation Analytics for Red Hat AAP
Automation Analytics configuration
Configuring the insights settings with roles/modules
Charts and other information accessible from the dashboard
Automation calculator
Prometheus metrics logging
Installation and configuration
Prometheus Graphs
Summary
Chapter 14: Automating at Scale with Automation Mesh
Technical requirements
Overview of Automation mesh
The distinct types of nodes
Using instance groups with Automation mesh
Creating instance groups
Examples of various use cases and how to use Automation mesh
Global Automation mesh example
Summary
Chapter 15: Using Automation Services Catalog
Technical requirements
What is Automation services catalog?
Configuring the ASC
Configuring the SSO for access to the ASC
Approvals inside ASC
Summary
Afterword
Index
About Packt
Other Books You May Enjoy
Copyright
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Chapter 1: ‘I’m thinking’ – Oh, but are you?
Chapter 2: Renegade perception
Chapter 3: The Pushbacker sting
Chapter 4: ‘Covid’: The calculated catastrophe
Chapter 5: There is no ‘virus’
Chapter 6: Sequence of deceit
Chapter 7: War on your mind
Chapter 8: ‘Reframing’ insanity
Chapter 9: We must have it? So what is it?
Chapter 10: Human 2.0
Chapter 11: Who controls the Cult?
Chapter 12: Escaping Wetiko
Postscript
Appendix: Cowan-Kaufman-Morell Statement on Virus Isolation
Bibliography
Index
