ProLUG Automation

Unit 4 Worksheet

Instructions

Fill out this sheet as you progress through the lab and discussions. Hold your worksheets until
the end to turn them in as a final submission packet.


Discussion Questions:

Unit 4 Discussion Post 1:
Your company is on a normal 3 year refresh cycle for hardware.
This means that they purchase ~1/3 of hardware in each year budget. You have 6 months
until the next purchase but have been having storage capacity issues in some of your
servers. Your team sits down and works out a plan to put in place some “Stop gap”
measures to keep the system running until the next deployment.

1. Find an article that discusses what “stop gap” measures are.

2. What is your understanding of the term “stop gap”.

3. What are some things you would be doing to help a system that has no way to add
   capacity before a certain time to continue operations between here and there?

    - What is meant by the term “draconian measures” in this context?


Unit 4 Discussion Post 2:
You and your security team have an accurate inventory after last
week’s misunderstanding. You have 110 servers currently in your inventory. What are some
methods you can use to verify those systems are operational?

1. How might you “touch” those servers every day?

2. How might you plan to keep that inventory updated automatically?

3. How might you monitor those servers? (What tools can you find that would do this?)

4. How might you present a report for these servers (to your team or others?)


Definitions/Terminology

- One-off
- Ad-hoc
- Admin Commands
- Stop gap fix
    - How does this relate to a full implementation?
    - How does this relate to a systemic system problem?
    - How does this relate to a systemic capacity problem?
- System load (and utilization ((always as a percentage)) )
    - Averages
    - High water mark
    - Low water mark
    - Spiking
    - Capacity


Notes During Lecture/Class:
Links:
•
Terms:
Useful tools:


Lab and Assignment
Unit4 Lab from Lab book
https://killercoda.com/het-tanis/course/AutomationLabs/Unit4_Admin_Commands


Digging Deeper

1. Read this article about Ansible ad-hoc commands
   https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/command_guide/intro_adhoc.html

    1. What did you learn about this that you didn’t know?

    2. How are you going to use this in your current or future automations?

Reflection Questions

1. What questions do you still have about this week?

2. How are you going to use what you’ve learned in your current role?