24 Hours

Getting Started & Setting Up Labs

• Choosing a right Infrastructure as Code tool
• Installing Terraform – Windows Users
• Installing Terraform – MacOS and Linux Users
• Choosing Right IDE for Terraform IAC development
• Setting up AWS account

Deploying Infrastructure with Terraform

• Creating first EC2 instance with Terraform
• Understanding Resources & Providers
• Understanding Resource & Providers – Part 2
• Destroying Infrastructure with Terraform
• Understanding Terraform State files
• Understanding Desired & Current States
• Challenges with the current state on computed values
• Terraform Provider Versioning
• Types of Terraform Providers

 Read, Generate, Modify Configurations

• Understanding Attributes and Output Values in Terraform
• Referencing Cross-Account Resource Attributes
• Terraform Variables
• Approaches for Variable Assignment
• Data Types for Variables
• Fetching Data from Maps and List in Variable
• Count and Count Index
• Conditional Expressions
• Local Values
• Terraform Functions
• Data Sources
• Debugging in Terraform
• Terraform Format
• Validating Terraform Configuration Files
• Load Order & Semantics
• Dynamic Blocks
• Tainting Resources
• Splat Expressions
• Terraform Graph
• Saving Terraform Plan to File

 Terraform Provisioners

• Understanding Provisioners in Terraform
• Types of Provisioners
• Implementing remote-exec provisioners
• Implementing local-exec provisioners

Terraform Modules & Workspaces

• Understanding DRY principle
• Implementing EC2 module with Terraform
• Variables and Terraform Modules
• Terraform Registry
• Terraform Workspace
• Implementing Terraform Workspace

 Remote State Management

• Integrating with GIT for team management
• Security Challenges in Committing TFState to GIT
• Remote State Management with Terraform
• Implementing S3 Backend
• Challenges with State File locking
• Integrating DynamoDB with S3 for state locking
• Terraform State Management
• Importing Existing Resources with Terraform Import

Security Primer

• Handling Access & Secret Keys the Right Way in Providers
• Terraform Provider Use Case – Resources in Multiple Regions
• Handling Multiple AWS Profiles with Terraform Providers
• Terraform & Assume Role with AWS STS
• Sensitive Parameter

24 Hours

Introduction to Ansible

• Ansible terminology
• Ansible required environment setup

Initial Setup and Configuration

• Ansible Core installation (package method)
• Ansible component locations
• Ansible documentation
• Ansible configuration file
• inventory (hosts) file (Linux and Windows nodes)
• (gathering) system facts
• Local facts

Ansible (ad-hoc) Command Line Usage

• Usage in single module control
• Testing a module across multiple nodes

Ansible Playbooks

• Layout of playbook sections and blocks
• Variable creation and usage
• Sections: hosts, variables, tasks, handlers, checking for success/failure
• Controls: loops, conditionals, tags, notifications, plugins, filters, and lookups
• Using modules in playbooks
• Running as root
• Conditionals
• Loops
• Status Checking
• Filters
• Lookups
• Plugins (connection)

Ansible Modules

• Layout of an Ansible module
• Linux modules : file, yum, systemd, cron, user, shell, filesystem
• Using the windows specific (win_) modules
• Common Linux and Windows modules

Roles Ansible

• Overview of a role
• Creating a role (structure)
• Using (a) role(s)
• Packaging up a role
• Ansible galaxy – capabilities and usage with roles
• (local) git code / role repo
• (remote) git repo role access
• Define role dependencies
• Download role definitions (ansible galaxy)
• Component files
• Including roles
• Importing roles
• Dependency specifications

Managed Nodes

• requirements for a Linux managed node
• setup of a Linux managed node
• requirements for a Windows managed node
• setup of a Windows managed node
• inventory and access control information on the control node

Dynamic Inventory Overview

• Understanding static vs. dynamic inventory.
• Importance and benefits of dynamic inventory in managing large-scale infrastructures.
• Comparison of dynamic inventory with static inventory.

Dynamic Inventory Sources

• Using cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) as dynamic inventory sources.
• Integration with external APIs for dynamic inventory generation.
• Managing on-premise resources using scripts for dynamic inventory.

Creating Dynamic Inventory Scripts

• Writing custom Python scripts for dynamic inventory.
• Structuring output in JSON format for Ansible compatibility.
• Testing dynamic inventory scripts.