A1-001: Automation Engineer Associate Artisan

Objective 1.1. Explain what Ansible is and what are the benefits of using it

Details
• Explain what Ansible is.
• Ansible architecture.
• Explain the key benefits of using Ansible.
• Give examples of systems that can be managed with Ansible.

Objective 1.2. Explain the Ansible installation and setup process

Details
• Ansible installation options.
• Initial Ansible setup steps, including preparing hosts for using Ansible in production.

Objective 1.3. Explain the main features and advantages of Ansible

Details
• Describe the agentless Ansible architecture.
• Describe the performance of Ansible.
• Describe the security of Ansible.

Objective 1.4. Explain how Ansible works

Details
• Describe Ansible modules usage.
• Describe the inventory file (INI and YAML formats).
• Explain the locations searched by Ansible for the inventory file
• Describe the Ansible configuration file.
• Describe dynamic inventory types (plugins and scripts).

Objective 1.5. Describe how to use Ansible with ad-hoc commands

Details
• Describe the ad-hoc command structure (“ansible” command syntax).
• Describe how to pass different arguments to modules.
• Describe authentication methods.

Objective 1.6. Describe how to use Ansible playbooks

Details
• Describe YAML language basics.
• Describe the general playbook structure.
• Explain the difference between modules, tasks, plays and playbooks.
• Describe task results. Explain the difference between “OK”, “changed”, and “failed”.
• Best practices to write idempotent tasks.
• Describe the usage of handlers.
• Describe the usage of tags.
• Understand how to use Ansible to run playbooks (“ansible-playbook” command syntax)

Objective 1.7. Describe Ansible facts and variables

Details
• Explain what are facts and when is fact gathering performed
• Describe how to disable default fact gathering behavior
• Explain how to create and use custom facts
• Explain Ansible variables and how they can be used in playbooks
• Explain the difference between facts and variables

Objective 1.8. Explain Loops and Conditionals

Details
• Explain how loops are implemented in Ansible.
• Describe how to use (multiple) Conditionals.
• Explain how to combine Loops and Conditionals.
• Explain how to keep track of the loop index.

Objective 1.9. Describe Ansible Templates

Details
• Explain the main usage of Ansible templates.
• Describe the Jinja2 template language.
• Explain Jinja2 common tests and filters.
• Describe the template module parameters.
• Describe Jinja 2 filter usage.

Objective 1.10. Describe usage of Ansible Vault

Details
• Explain the advantages of Ansible Vault.
• Describe Ansible Vault commands.
• Explain how multiple vaults can be used in the same playbook (vault IDs).
• Explain how to speed up Ansible Vault operations.

Objective 1.11. Describe Ansible Roles

Details
• Explain the advantages of using roles
• Describe the typical role directory structure
• Explain the difference between the “vars/” and “defaults/” role directories.
• Describe methods of using roles in playbooks
• Explain what happens when a role is applied multiple times within a playbook

Objective 1.12. Describe Ansible lookups

Details
• Describe the most common types of lookup plugins.
• Explain the lookup evaluation process.

Objective 1.13. Describe Ansible Pull

Details
• Explain how ansible-pull works.
• Describe how to use ansible-pull.

Objective 1.14. Describe Ansible Galaxy

Details
• Describe the usage of Ansible Galaxy.
• Explain the ansible-galaxy command (with subcommands).

Objective 1.15. Describe Ansible integration with docker and Kubernetes

Details
• Describe the Ansible docker_service module.
• Describe Jinja filters used to interact with Kubernetes.

Objective 1.16. Describe best practices of Ansible

Details
• Describe the Ansible execution strategies.
• Explain how to use the Ansible debugger (including debugger commands).
• Explain advantages and limitations of Ansible pipelining.
• Explain how to show time spent in Ansible tasks.
• Explain what task delegation is.
• Explain how to abort play execution depending of failure.