Network Automation with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

An inventory defines nodes in your network topology that Ansible manages. A static inventory can be defined in a text file.

A play is an ordered list of tasks that run against nodes selected from the inventory.

A playbook is a text file, written in YAML format, that contains a list of one or more plays to run in order.

A task is implemented using standardized code packaged as Ansible modules.

Ansible modules are packaged into Ansible Content Collections, which are a way to distribute Ansible content, which can consist of modules, roles, plug-ins, and playbooks.

In general, tasks in an Ansible Playbook are idempotent, which means that they do not change the managed node if the node's current state matches its desired state.

The ansible-navigator settings command can be used to review and manage that command's configuration settings. The --sample option generates a sample configuration file, and the --effective option generates a configuration file that reflects the current configuration.

The ansible-navigator doc and ansible-navigator collections commands can list modules in your automation execution environments, and provide documentation and example code snippets of how to use them in playbooks.

The ansible-navigator run command is used to run playbooks and validate playbook syntax.

Several types of network automation modules are available, such as facts modules, command modules, config modules, and resource modules.