Advanced Ansible Patterns Training

Take your Ansible skills to expert level with this 3-day advanced course. Dive deep into custom module development, plugin authoring, collection building, performance tuning, and complex automation patterns used in large-scale production environments.

Training Details


Duration	3 days (24 hours)
Level	Advanced
Delivery	In-person, Live online, Hybrid
Certification	Red Hat Certified Specialist in Developing Automation (EX374)

Who Is This For?

Experienced Ansible users building custom automation
Automation architects designing enterprise-grade solutions
Developers creating custom Ansible modules and plugins
Teams maintaining large Ansible codebases

Learning Outcomes

After completing this training, you’ll be able to:

Develop custom Ansible modules in Python
Write callback, filter, and lookup plugins
Build and publish Ansible collections
Optimize playbook performance for large-scale environments
Implement complex automation patterns (delegation, serial, throttling)
Test automation code with Molecule and ansible-lint

Detailed Agenda

Day 1: Custom Module and Plugin Development

Module 1: Custom Module Development

Module architecture and AnsibleModule class
Argument specification and validation
Return values and check mode support
Hands-on: Write a custom module with full argument spec

Module 2: Plugin Development

Plugin types — callback, filter, lookup, inventory, connection
Filter plugins for data transformation
Lookup plugins for external data sources
Hands-on: Build custom filter and lookup plugins

Module 3: Collections Development

Collection structure and galaxy.yml
Packaging modules, plugins, and roles
Versioning, changelogs, and publishing
Hands-on: Build and publish a complete Ansible collection

Day 2: Performance and Scale

Module 4: Performance Optimization

Profiling playbook execution with callback plugins
SSH pipelining and connection tuning
Fact caching strategies
Hands-on: Benchmark and optimize slow playbooks

Module 5: Large-Scale Patterns

Serial execution and rolling updates
Delegation and cross-host orchestration
Async tasks and polling
Hands-on: Implement zero-downtime rolling deployments

Module 6: Advanced Inventory Patterns

Composed and constructed inventories
Custom inventory plugins
Inventory variable merging strategies
Hands-on: Build a custom dynamic inventory plugin

Day 3: Testing and Enterprise Patterns

Module 7: Testing Automation Code

Linting with ansible-lint and custom rules
Unit testing modules with pytest
Integration testing with Molecule
Hands-on: Set up Molecule for role testing

Module 8: Advanced Playbook Patterns

Complex variable management with include_vars
Dynamic includes vs static imports
Encryption with Ansible Vault — multi-vault strategies
Hands-on: Implement multi-environment secret management

Module 9: Enterprise Automation Architecture

Repository structures for large organizations
Shared roles and collections governance
CI/CD pipelines for Ansible code
Hands-on: Design and implement an enterprise automation repository

Prerequisites

6+ months hands-on Ansible experience
Comfortable writing playbooks and roles
Basic Python programming knowledge
Understanding of Ansible inventory and variable precedence

Delivery Formats

Format	Description
In-Person	On-site at your company’s location, hands-on with direct interaction
Live Online	Interactive virtual sessions with screen sharing and real-time labs
Hybrid	Combination of on-site and remote sessions, flexible scheduling

All formats include hands-on labs, course materials, and post-training support.