Red Hat 9 System Administration - Part 3 - Linux Automation with Ansible

Automating system admin tasks improves efficiency and reduces human error. This topic covers the use of Ansible modules to manage users, services, firewalls, and scheduled jobs. You’ll learn to apply modules such as 'service', 'firewalld', 'user', 'cron', and 'seboolean'. Special focus is placed on security practices, including SELinux settings and the use of Ansible for enforcing consistent configurations across systems, essential for large-scale IT environments. 

Understanding Ansible variables and facts is essential for creating dynamic and reusable playbooks. This section covers how to define and apply simple, list, and dictionary variables. You’ll also discover how to use external variable files and retrieve host facts, then apply them in conditional logic. You'll register task outputs for use in later steps, manage Ansible prompts, and iterate through lists to tailor automation precisely to your needs. 

Expand your automation capabilities by creating roles and templates. Learn to structure roles using Ansible Galaxy standards and download community roles for faster deployment. You’ll work with Jinja2 templates for dynamic configuration file generation and securely handle sensitive data using Ansible Vault. Finally, integrate Ansible with shell scripts to build robust, reusable automation workflows suited for real enterprise challenges.