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Ansible Tutorial for Beginners [RHCE EX294 Exam]

Free, hands-on Ansible tutorial for beginners that takes you from zero to RHCE EX294. Lab setup, playbooks, roles, vaults, AWS provisioning - 27 lessons across 8 chapters, every example tested on RHEL 8+.

  • 27 parts
  • ~231 min total
  • Beginner to Advanced
  • Updated May 2026
Start the course View syllabus
Ansible Tutorial for Beginners [RHCE EX294 Exam]
By Last updated

This tutorial covers everything you need to become a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) on RHEL 8 and higher. With RHEL 8, Red Hat overhauled the RHCE program to focus on data-center automation with Ansible instead of advanced Linux topics, so the syllabus below is built around the RHCE EX294 exam objectives.

We start by setting up your own lab environment - hands-on practice is the only thing that makes Ansible click - then walk through inventory, playbooks, templates, roles, vaults, and finally a real-world AWS provisioning example. Every chapter is short, idempotent, and tested on RHEL 8+, Rocky Linux 9, and Ubuntu 22.04.

If you are new here, click Start the course and you will be taken to the first lesson. If you already know the basics, jump straight to the chapter you need - each lesson is also self-contained.

What you'll learn

  • Stand up a complete Ansible control node + managed nodes lab from scratch
  • Write idempotent playbooks, roles, and reusable Jinja2 templates
  • Use loops, conditionals, handlers, blocks, and tags for real automation
  • Encrypt secrets with Ansible Vault and securely provision AWS infrastructure
  • Pass Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE EX294) automation tasks confidently

Prerequisites

  • Comfortable with Linux command line (basic file, user, package management)
  • A workstation running RHEL 8+, Rocky/CentOS Stream, or any modern Ubuntu
  • SSH access to at least one managed node (a VM, container, or cloud instance)
  • Basic knowledge of YAML (helpful but not required - covered in Chapter 4)

Syllabus

8 chapters · 27 lessons · ~231 min of reading

  1. 1 Getting Started 2 lessons
    1. Part 1 Getting started with Ansible 2 min read
    2. Part 2 Ansible architecture explained 3 min read
  2. 2 Installation and Lab Setup 4 lessons
    1. Part 3 Pre-requisites to set up Ansible 3 min read
    2. Part 4 Installing Ansible on the control node 3 min read
    3. Part 5 Configuring Ansible after install 3 min read
    4. Part 6 Ansible configuration file (ansible.cfg) 9 min read
  3. 3 Inventory and Connectivity 4 lessons
    1. Part 7 Ansible inventory files 15 min read
    2. Part 8 Using Ansible ad-hoc commands 12 min read
    3. Part 9 Manage nodes that have no Python 2 min read
    4. Part 10 Connect with --ask-pass (password auth) 2 min read
  4. 4 Templates, Variables and Data 4 lessons
    1. Part 11 Jinja2 templates and syntax 10 min read
    2. Part 12 Ansible facts (gathering and using) 3 min read
    3. Part 13 Ansible variables and data types 18 min read
    4. Part 14 YAML syntax used in Ansible playbooks 4 min read
  5. 5 Writing Playbooks 2 lessons
    1. Part 15 Introduction to Ansible playbooks 16 min read
    2. Part 16 Write playbooks in VS Code (GUI) 3 min read
  6. 6 Logic and Control Flow 7 lessons
    1. Part 17 Operators in Ansible 9 min read
    2. Part 18 Ansible conditional statements (when/until) 9 min read
    3. Part 19 Ansible handlers (notify pattern) 11 min read
    4. Part 20 Repeating tasks with Ansible loop 7 min read
    5. Part 21 Using Ansible tags 12 min read
    6. Part 22 Block / rescue / always (error recovery) 19 min read
    7. Part 23 include vs import modules 6 min read
  7. 7 Roles 2 lessons
    1. Part 24 Ansible roles directory structure 5 min read
    2. Part 25 Create your first Ansible role 20 min read
  8. 8 Real-World Automation 2 lessons
    1. Part 26 Ansible Vault - encrypting secrets 11 min read
    2. Part 27 Provision AWS infrastructure with Ansible 14 min read
Deepak Prasad

R&D Engineer

Founder of GoLinuxCloud with over a decade of expertise in Linux, Python, Go, Laravel, DevOps, Kubernetes, Git, Shell scripting, OpenShift, AWS, Networking, and Security. With extensive experience, he excels across development, DevOps, …

Certifications
  • Red Hat Certified System Administrator in Red Hat OpenStack
  • Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
  • Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation
Expertise
  • Go (programming language)
  • Python (programming language)
  • DevOps
  • Computer Security