Ansible Automation Platform labs: “A day in the life of an automator"

OVERVIEW

You’re hired!

Welcome to the team at our fictional company, Parasol Video Streaming! You're new, fresh, and eager to dive into the world of cutting-edge media technology, and we’re excited to have you on board. Here, we firmly believe in the power of automation, which has been key to building our market-leading edge. In fact, some even consider us the top player in the industry! We know it might feel overwhelming as you begin your journey, but don’t worry — you’re equipped with the best tools to succeed!

During this half-day Ansible Automation Platform event, we’ll tackle your new fictional company’s challenges together through hands-on labs that walk through solving each use case/story.

Why attend?

Attending the Ansible Automation Platform event gives you an opportunity to immerse yourself in industry-leading automation insights that can transform your business operations by adopting a "mission-critical" mindset.

You'll have the opportunity to hear from experts and learn best practices for automating real-world scenarios.

When you leave this interactive event, you'll be able to:

Understand how AAP can drive efficiency from planning, to provision, to maintenance in your IT estate
Experience diverse use cases that can leverage Ansible automation
Have an amazing time while building new connections as you explore your automation journey

Lab Highlights (see more details below)

Lab 1: Introspection and planning (Day-0)
- You have just joined a new team and you are new to automating. You would like to start and would like to leverage AAP to gather information around various infrastructure (“safe” read-only activities). Let’s leverage automation to find out more about what we have in order to gain insights into what can and should be done next!
Lab 2: Standardizing deployments with workflows (Day-1)
- Let’s proceed with deploying and verifying a new application to production. We’ll create a workflow that reuses existing templates that have been provided already by the different teams to build out their production environments
Lab 3: Enhancing operational efficiencies (Day-2)
- Once you have successfully deployed a production environment, we want to ensure we can leverage the business benefits by introducing better methods of automating and using Event-Driven Ansible to safeguard mission critical components such as your delivery network or application

Who is this event best for?
This event is best suited for IT Operations professionals and Architects.

Agenda

Time	Session
9:30 - 10:00 AM	Registration and breakfast
10:00 - 11:00 AM	Lab 1
11:00 - 12:00 PM	Lab 2
12:00 - 1:00 PM	Lunch
1:00 - 2:30 PM	Lab 3
2:30 - 3:00 PM	Wrap up

Event details:

Time: 9:30 AM - 3:00 PM (UTC-07:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Date: Thursday, April 17, 2025

Location: The Westin San Jose, 302 S Market Street, San Jose, California, United States, 95113

Any questions? Reach out to jrapkine@redhat.com

This event has ended. For information about the event, or registration for the next event, please contact the event registration service.

Lab scenario descriptions and details

Lab 1: Introspection & planning

You want to start automating but you don’t want to impact any production servers or make any changes. In this challenge we focus on creating file system backups and creating scheduled snapshots. Create backups of our RHEL servers Create a snapshot for our Windows system Configure an automated snapshot schedule Why is this important ? Being able to drive backups/snapshots automatically allows us to safeguard against future problematic changes to systems. Automating backups as part of an automation workflow allows us to roll back changes in the event of a task failure. AAP technologies utilized Ansible Automation Platform Automation Controller Certified Content Collections Learning Objectives: Using Ansible to gather facts Building dynamic infrastructure reports with Jinja Creating Snapshots/Backing up servers

You want to start automating but you don’t want to impact any production servers or make any changes.

In this challenge we focus on creating file system backups and creating scheduled snapshots.

Create backups of our RHEL servers
Create a snapshot for our Windows system
Configure an automated snapshot schedule

Why is this important ?

Being able to drive backups/snapshots automatically allows us to safeguard against future problematic changes to systems.

Automating backups as part of an automation workflow allows us to roll back changes in the event of a task failure.

AAP technologies utilized
- Ansible Automation Platform
- Automation Controller
- Certified Content Collections
Learning Objectives:
- Using Ansible to gather facts
- Building dynamic infrastructure reports with Jinja
- Creating Snapshots/Backing up servers

Lab 2: Standardizing deployments with workflows (Day 1)

You want to start automating but you don’t want to impact any production servers or make any changes. In this challenge we focus on Ansible’s ability to gather data on our systems and to use this data for infrastructure awareness. Use Ansible to gather system facts on a host Use a template to gather system data and create an html report with a jinja template Leverage OpenSCAP to create a compliance report for a host Why is this important? Ansible is able to automate multiple domains, this makes it a powerful tool to gather facts, collect important service data and create dynamic reports for our teams awareness. AAP technologies utilized Ansible Automation Platform Automation Controller Certified Content Collections Learning Objectives: Manage Windows and RHEL core infrastructure Deploying Active Directory and integrating systems Deploying Applications across multiple platforms

You want to start automating but you don’t want to impact any production servers or make any changes.

In this challenge we focus on Ansible’s ability to gather data on our systems and to use this data for infrastructure awareness.

Use Ansible to gather system facts on a host
Use a template to gather system data and create an html report with a jinja template
Leverage OpenSCAP to create a compliance report for a host

Why is this important?

Ansible is able to automate multiple domains, this makes it a powerful tool to gather facts, collect important service data and create dynamic reports for our teams awareness.

AAP technologies utilized

Ansible Automation Platform
- Automation Controller
- Certified Content Collections

Learning Objectives:

Manage Windows and RHEL core infrastructure
Deploying Active Directory and integrating systems
Deploying Applications across multiple platforms

Lab 3: Enhancing operational efficiencies (Day 2)

You want to start automating, but you don’t want to impact any production servers or make any changes. In this challenge we utilize the ansible.windows content collection to gather a required update list Create a survey on our template Generate an update report based on our survey Publish the report to our IIS server Why is this important? Patch management is a critical part of infrastructure. Finding out which updates are needed can be extremely useful at scale. Ansible Automation Platform can provide a centralized reporting and patch management interface for your different servers. AAP technologies utilized Ansible Automation Platform Automation Controller Certified Content Collections Event-Driven Controller Learning Objectives: Utilize Event-Driven Ansible to monitor for events in our production environment Remediate failures with Event-Driven Ansible Gather fault details for ticket enrichment with ServiceNow Integrate Ansible Automation Platform with Red Hat Insights

You want to start automating, but you don’t want to impact any production servers or make any changes.

In this challenge we utilize the ansible.windows content collection to gather a required update list

Create a survey on our template
Generate an update report based on our survey
Publish the report to our IIS server

Why is this important?

Patch management is a critical part of infrastructure. Finding out which updates are needed can be extremely useful at scale. Ansible Automation Platform can provide a centralized reporting and patch management interface for your different servers.

AAP technologies utilized

Ansible Automation Platform
- Automation Controller
- Certified Content Collections
- Event-Driven Controller

Learning Objectives:

Utilize Event-Driven Ansible to monitor for events in our production environment
Remediate failures with Event-Driven Ansible
Gather fault details for ticket enrichment with ServiceNow
Integrate Ansible Automation Platform with Red Hat Insights

Travel / Location

Location:
The Westin San Jose
302 S Market Street
San Jose, California 95113, United States

Red Hat is committed to the health and safety of our customers, partners, and employees. All attendees will be expected to follow Red Hat and local guidelines regarding COVID-19. Please do not attend if you are feeling ill or have any symptoms of a viral infection. Please note that all protocols are subject to change.

Date: Thursday, April 17, 2025
Time: 9:30 AM - 3:00 PM (UTC-07:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Any questions? Reach out to jrapkine@redhat.com.

Ansible Automation Platform labs: “A day in the life of an automator"

Ansible Automation Platform labs: “A day in the life of an automator"

OVERVIEW

Agenda

Lab scenario descriptions and details

Travel / Location

Red Hat legal and privacy links

Red Hat legal and privacy links