The Ansible Book
A step-by-step guide to Ansible - from your first playbook to real-world automation at scale.
A step-by-step guide to Ansible - from your first playbook to real-world automation at scale.
About this book
Ansible is one of the most widely used automation tools in IT today. It is open-source, agentless, and built around plain YAML files. You describe what you want to happen, and Ansible makes it happen - on one server or a thousand.
This book is a step-by-step guide to Ansible. It starts from the very beginning, so you do not need prior automation experience. If you can log into a Linux server and run a command, you can follow along.
Coming Soon - This book is being written in the open. The full manuscript is in progress. Follow the Leanpub page to get notified when it is ready.
What you’ll learn
- Getting started - what Ansible is, how it works, and setting up your lab (Vagrant, cloud labs, Terraform, VS Code Remote SSH, containers)
- Core building blocks - YAML basics, inventory, ad-hoc commands, playbooks, variables, and facts
- Playbook logic - loops, conditionals, handlers, error control, tags, includes, imports, and roles
- Inventory and variables - host/group vars, variable precedence, magic variables, dynamic inventory, and Ansible Vault
- Templating and collections - Jinja2 templates, collections, and AWX / Automation Controller
- Complex automation - multi-tier deployments, DevOps pipelines, network automation, and containerization
- Real-world use cases - server management, OS patching at scale, AWS provisioning, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Windows automation, and notifications
- Debugging and troubleshooting - a systematic approach to fixing playbooks when things go wrong
- Best practices - the Zen of Ansible, native YAML syntax, safe production patterns, and trusted content
Who this is for
- Sysadmins who want to stop repeating manual work across servers.
- DevOps engineers and SREs who need practical, working automation patterns.
- Developers and network engineers who are new to Ansible and want a clear path in.
- Anyone who has tried Ansible before, found it confusing, and wants it explained properly.
What you should know first
Basic Linux command-line skills - navigating directories, editing files, running commands. No prior automation experience needed. The book starts from first principles and builds up to real-world, production-grade automation.
About the author
Gineesh Madapparambath
Gineesh has over 20 years of experience in IT service management and consultancy, with hands-on work planning, deploying, and supporting Linux-based projects.
He has designed and delivered automation using Ansible and Ansible Automation Platform for server build, patching, license management, network ops, and custom monitoring across global data centers in classic, private cloud (OpenStack, VMware), and public cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) environments.
His focus areas are IT and application automation with Ansible, containerization with OpenShift and Kubernetes, and infrastructure automation with Terraform.