“Minimum water, maximum benefit,” is what students say about an Ansible course that has successfully survived two streams. At some point in the internal chat flood, Marsel Ibraev, the technical director of Slurm, wrote that he had taken this course. This raised several questions, the main one being WHY?

We spoke with Marcel to find out why CTOs need to learn and what three words characterize an Ansible course.

Why did the CTO take the Ansible course

- Marcel, why did you decide to take the Ansible course?

- In my position, besides the word “director”, there is also the word “technical”. It obliges you to maintain your professional level, or better - to improve it. In order not to lose my grip, I go to conferences, read articles and documentation, play at stands with new technologies. Sometimes my name is to twist and dig something in production.

It just so happens that I haven't used Ansible for about two years. I wanted to see what's new and interesting. Our course coped with this task.

- You are, so to speak, a big boy DevOps. How much would the course make your life easier if you had to work with your hands more often?

- If I didn’t know anything about Ansible or heard about it by the edge of my ear, the course would really help. And very seriously. It clearly explains what kind of technology it is and why it is needed, and an example shows how to create infrastructure by hand or using Ansible.

The course is built from simple to complex, and towards the end of the lesson, what I liked most happens - an analysis of real cases. We don't just take and install conditional Nginx. We analyze specific cases, in particular, we consider real galaxy roles and Jinja.

Also in the course there is a comparison of Ansible with competitors, the pros and cons of each solution are sorted out. This is really helpful - it helps you choose a configuration system for your project.

So if I didn’t know anything about Ansible, then after the course I would begin to navigate the system well. At my current level, the course helped to refresh my memory base - this is also very valuable.

“I remember writing roles and playbooks for Nginx”

- Where do you think this course will be most useful in your career?

- The course will be an excellent boost for those who want to become devops and master the tools of the methodology.

I studied Ansible, collecting information piece by piece: article there, documentation here, play with configurations on my virtual machine, see what works and what doesn't. I remember, for practice, I wrote roles and playbooks for Nginx for the automatic issuance of certificates through Let’s Encrypt, for the creation of all sorts of virtual hosts with a certain configuration, etc.

All this is in the course with specific examples. So at the beginning of a career, an Ansible course is a must have. I looked and started my growth, mastered the tool faster and got a few steps closer to the goal of becoming a real DevOps.

- Isn't it possible to find all this information on the Internet?

- Ansible is not a new technology, so, in principle, information from the course can be found in the public domain.

But here are two things from the course that are not on the internet:

Best practices from an expert who has been working with technology for a long time. In addition to bare theory and practice, the course has recommendations on how to do and how not, stories about stuffed cones, etc. Someone else's experience is very useful - it helps to get around the rake in your own work.

Structured and detailed material. Finding really useful information on the Internet takes a lot of time and effort. In the course, the material has already been selected, processed, built from simple to complex, supplemented with practical work and testing with verification.

Ansible course in three words

- What three words do you associate with an Ansible course?

- The first word is memes. There are a lot of gags and video inserts in the course (laughs). Here you are watching a lesson, you start to get tired and nod off, and then again - a funny insert in the topic. He laughed a little, and the focus of attention returned to learning.

- Cool! Second word.

- Secondly, I would choose the word "structure". Information is presented sequentially, from simple cases and bases to cloud configuration and database replication.

- And, finally, the third?

- The third I would call the word "practice". There is much more practice in the Ansible course and it is deeper than in some of our projects, for example intensives (the format of online training on intensives 2-3 days for 6-8 hours - editor's note). Due to the limited time on intensives, we cannot give large and wide practices in which you need to think for a couple of hours on your own. More often tasks are done in the “repeat after the speaker” format. This is a sacrifice for the amount of content.

It's great that we managed to overcome this within the framework of the video course and that the students have enough time to think and play with what we teach.

The third stream of the Ansible course

On January 20, the third stream "Ansible: from the first steps to a large project" starts. In the course, we will systematize knowledge of Ansible and learn the IaaC approach. Groups are waiting for additional assignments, analysis of student practices and cases, technical support right in the training chat and meetings with the speaker.

View the detailed program and sign up: https://slurm.io/ansible

bbabo.Net