Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) Study Guide

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

   PDF

2. Understanding Ansible and the Red Hat RHCE

   • Andrew Mallett

   Pages 1-9

3. Working with the Ansible Configuration

   • Andrew Mallett

   Pages 11-27

4. Creating an Ansible Inventory

   • Andrew Mallett

   Pages 29-45

5. Using Ad Hoc Commands and Ansible Preparation

   • Andrew Mallett

   Pages 47-61

6. Writing YAML and Basic Playbooks

   • Andrew Mallett

   Pages 63-77

7. Managing Users with Ansible Playbooks

   • Andrew Mallett

   Pages 79-100

8. Working with Variables and Facts

   • Andrew Mallett

   Pages 101-112

9. Working with Files and Templates

   • Andrew Mallett

   Pages 113-122

10. Managing Services Using Ansible

    • Andrew Mallett

    Pages 123-133

11. Securing Sensitive Data with Ansible Vault

    • Andrew Mallett

    Pages 135-142

12. Implementing a Full Apache Deployment

    • Andrew Mallett

    Pages 143-159

13. Simplifying Playbooks Using Roles

    • Andrew Mallett

    Pages 161-174

14. Downloading Roles

    • Andrew Mallett

    Pages 175-193

15. Configuring Storage with Ansible

    • Andrew Mallett

    Pages 195-216

16. Managing Scheduled Tasks with Ansible

    • Andrew Mallett

    Pages 217-221

17. Back Matter

    Pages 223-227

    PDF

Study the material in this book to prepare for the RHCE exam EX294 and to learn how using Ansible within your own environment improves system administration productivity.

This book covers all of the objectives of the exam and extends further, ensuring that you know how to use Ansible to manage Linux. The book uses CentOS, a Red Hat-based distribution, and Ubuntu instead of using a single Red Hat distribution. By using the two distributions, you will understand the power of Ansible and how easily you can deal with multiple platforms, which is crucial for your understanding of Ansible in the real world.

The book assumes no previous knowledge of Ansible but some knowledge of Linux system administration from the command line. You will learn how to manage Linux systems that are installed with different distributions, including CentOS Enterprise Linux 8 and Ubuntu 18.04. You will be able to manage these systems using ad hoc commands from the command line as well as creatingAnsible playbooks that can be replayed reliably many times. To save on the code that you have to create, you will learn how to use Ansible Galaxy to search for and download roles and collections that are pre-written to manage elements of your Linux installations. By the end of this book, you will be able to write efficient and effective YAML playbooks to manage your entire estate.

What You Will Learn

• Prepare systems so that password-less access can be used with Ansible remotely
• Use ad hoc commands to quickly configure systems
• Use and format YAML files correctly
• Create playbooks that grow in their complexity as your experience develops
• Ensure that services are restarted on configuration changes

Who This Book Is For


Those who want to prepare for the RHCE exam EX294 and readers who want to learn how to use Ansible to improve the productivity of their system administration. This book will help you prepare yourself for the exam as well as your real-life administration needs.

• RHCE
• Ansible
• DevOps
• Ansible Automation
• Red Hat
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

• Peterborough, UK

  Andrew Mallett

Andrew Mallett is a well-known Linux consultant and trainer, and his YouTube Channel has over 65K subscribers and more than 1,000 videos. Working mainly online now, he has authored courses on both Pluralsight and Udemy, and regularly teaches classes online to a worldwide audience. Andrew is familiar with Linux and UNIX and has worked with them for over 20 years. Scripting and automation is one of his passions as he is inherently lazy and will always seek the most effective way of getting the job done. The Urban Penguin, his alter ego, is a UK-based company where he creates his work and currently employs five people.

Policies and ethics