Automation with Ansible & Terraform

Understanding the core principles of modern IT automation.

• What is DevOps? (Culture, Automation, Measurement).
• What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?
• Declarative vs. Imperative automation.
• Provisioning (Terraform) vs. Configuration Management (Ansible).

Getting started with the Terraform workflow.

• Installing Terraform and setting up providers (AWS/Azure).
• The core Terraform workflow: `init`, `plan`, `apply`, `destroy`.
• Understanding Terraform configuration files (`.tf`).
• Writing your first configuration (e.g., EC2 instance, S3 bucket).

Mastering the HCL language and managing state.

• Variables, Data Types, and Outputs.
• Data Sources to fetch existing infrastructure.
• Deep dive into Terraform State (`terraform.tfstate`).
• Remote state management with S3 and DynamoDB.

Writing reusable and maintainable IaC.

• Creating and using local modules.
• Using public modules from the Terraform Registry.
• Provisioners (e.g., `remote-exec`) and when to avoid them.
• Terraform Loops (`count`, `for_each`).

Applying Terraform to build a production-like network.

• Building a VPC from scratch (Subnets, Route Tables, NAT Gateway).
• Creating Security Groups and IAM Roles.
• Deploying a load-balanced set of web servers.
• Managing different environments (dev/prod) with workspaces.

Getting started with Ansible's agentless architecture.

• Ansible architecture (Control Node, Managed Nodes).
• Setting up Ansible and connecting to servers via SSH.
• Ansible Inventory: Static and Dynamic.
• Running ad-hoc commands for simple tasks.

Writing automation scripts using YAML playbooks.

• Playbook structure (hosts, tasks, plays).
• Writing idempotent tasks.
• Common modules (apt/yum, service, file, copy, template).
• Registering variables and controlling output.

Making your playbooks dynamic and intelligent.

• Ansible Facts and variable precedence.
• Using variables (vars, vars_files, group_vars, host_vars).
• Loops (`loop`) and Conditionals (`when`).
• Handlers for restarting services.

Creating reusable automation components.

• Role directory structure.
• Creating a role (e.g., `nginx` or `common`).
• Using roles in your playbooks.
• Ansible Galaxy for finding and using community roles.

Managing secrets and sensitive data securely.

• What is Ansible Vault?
• Encrypting variable files and individual variables.
• Using Vault passwords in playbooks.
• Best practices for managing secrets.

Building a complete end-to-end automation workflow.

• Provisioning with Terraform, Configuring with Ansible.
• Using Terraform's `local-exec` provisioner to run Ansible.
• Using Terraform outputs to build a dynamic Ansible inventory.
• Alternative patterns (e.g., Packer, EC2 User Data).

Bringing it all together to deploy a full application.

• Use Terraform to provision a VPC, subnets, load balancer, and database.
• Use Terraform to provision EC2 instances for web and app tiers.
• Generate a dynamic Ansible inventory from Terraform.
• Use Ansible Roles to configure web servers (Nginx) and deploy the application.