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.
• The role of execution environments and automation mesh within the platform architecture.
• Deployment methodologies and enterprise topologies, encompassing containerised, RPM-based, and OpenShift Operator approaches.
• Preparing the installer inventory and finalising the installation for the chosen deployment method.
• Establishing initial platform access, configuring subscriptions, and navigating the unified interface.

2 Managing users and access permissions

• Establishing organisations, teams, and user accounts.
• Understanding local accounts and centralised authentication methods, such as LDAP.
• Applying built-in roles, resource permissions, and permission inheritance.
• Controlling access to platform resources and private automation hub content.

3 Managing inventories and machine credentials

• Creating static inventories, hosts, groups, and their associated variables.
• Configuring machine credentials using SSH keys, passwords, and privilege-escalation settings.
• Understanding credential types and their application during job execution.
• Regulating who can administer or utilise inventories and credentials.
• Verifying access to managed hosts via ad hoc commands.

4 Managing projects and launching jobs

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

5 Utilising advanced job template features

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

6 Constructing automation workflows

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

7 Managing advanced inventories

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

8 Automating platform configuration

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

9 Maintaining and troubleshooting the platform

• Managing services and locating logs for the selected deployment method.
• Investigating common platform and job-execution failures.
• Using management jobs to maintain job history and activity-stream data.
• Planning and executing backup and restoration procedures.
• Reviewing upgrade considerations and subscription management.

10 Scaling deployments with automation mesh

• Understanding the roles of control, execution, and hop nodes, considering hybrid-node behaviour where applicable to the deployment model.
• Connecting nodes through 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 how node or service failures impact automation execution and recovery.

11 Comprehensive platform administration review

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