Learning Ansible, Second Edition

This second edition shows you exactly the proven and usable, tried-and-tested ansible techniques that will help you bring stability to your own operation. It is a hands-on absolutely, built on Ansible-Core 2.21, where you'll set up a clean control node, write reusable roles, protect secrets and test each change before it reaches a server. Next, you'll be patching Linux and Windows fleets, provisioning AWS and Azure resources using Terraform, deploying to Kubernetes and OpenShift, and sharing automation safely through Ansible Automation Platform.

In the later chapters, it's all about production. You'll build monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana, fix familiar failures automatically with Event-Driven Ansible, and diagnose CPU, memory, database and network faults with ready-to-run playbooks. At last, you'll be able to hook up AI agents and MCP servers to Ansible. Every single chapter is making a strong effort to focus on practical, hands-on techniques, so you can put each one into practice right away.

Key Learnings

Build version-pinned control node with execution environments and ansible-navigator.

Write reusable roles and collections with argument specs, handlers and failure handling.

Protect secrets with Ansible Vault and HashiCorp Vault.

Patch Linux and Windows fleets through rolling updates.

Provision AWS and Azure resources while dividing work cleanly between Terraform and Ansible.

Deploy, verify and roll back containerized releases on Kubernetes and OpenShift using Helm.

Scale team automation with Automation Platform workflows, surveys, approval gates and RBAC.

Auto-remediate full disks, crashed services and expiring certificates with Event-Driven Ansible rulebooks.

Diagnose CPU, memory, database and network faults, then open ServiceNow incidents automatically.

Connect AI agents and MCP servers to Ansible with approvals, allowlists and scoped credentials.

Table of Content

Getting Started with Modern Ansible

Building Reusable Playbooks and Roles

Securing and Testing Automation

Managing Linux and Windows Fleets

Provisioning Cloud Infrastructure with Terraform and Ansible

Automating Containers and Kubernetes on OpenShift

Scaling with Ansible Automation Platform

Building Observability

Auto-Remediating with Event-Driven Ansible

Diagnosing and Resolving Production Issues

Building AI Agents for Ansible Operations

Connecting Ansible to Tools using MCP