Red Hat Certified Advanced System Administrator in Ansible Exam (EX294)

When server builds, user provisioning, and storage changes are done by hand, hosts drift from standard and every change depends on whoever remembers the steps. IT teams complete this training to build a shared Ansible practice for automating Red Hat Enterprise Linux administration and to prepare for the Red Hat Certified Engineer (EX294) exam.

Role fit: Built for IT Practitioners with three to five years of Linux experience. A current RHCSA is required to earn the RHCE, so Team Leads should confirm that prerequisite before assigning this course. CBT Nuggets also offers RHCSA EX200 training.

Time investment: About 19 hours across 22 skills. Most skills run under an hour, so Training Managers can plan one or two skills per learner per week.

Scope: The course covers playbooks, variables and secrets, loops and conditions, Jinja templates, roles, users, services, networking, storage, RAID and encryption, SELinux, packages, troubleshooting, running playbooks with Ansible Navigator, and two exam-prep skills that walk through exam-style tasks.

Change management: Learners build their own control node and managed hosts, so plan for non-production lab VMs. The course relies on RHEL system roles and command-line documentation, which helps teams converge on reusable, consistent automation instead of one-off scripts.

IT teams take this training to replace repetitive, error-prone manual Linux administration with repeatable Ansible automation. As the course notes, servers with different requirements and configurations quickly become unmanageable at scale. Your team learns to define that work once in YAML playbooks and roles, then run it consistently across managed hosts.

The course builds those skills through concrete scenarios:

• Consistent builds across managed nodes: Practitioners build an inventory for a control node and two managed nodes, then use playbooks and roles to apply Linux administration tasks consistently across hosts.
• Faster, safer security and system changes: The course connects familiar RHCSA-style tasks — managing users, basic security, storage, and file systems — to Ansible automation, so your team understands the administrative action before it is automated.
• Fewer stalled automation runs: Using the debug module, registered variables, and YAML whitespace and syntax checks, practitioners diagnose failing playbooks without escalating.
• Enterprise-ready operations: An optional skill introduces Ansible Automation Controller, which adds role-based access control, separate organizations and inventories, and scheduled job runs for teams that manage automation centrally.

Practitioners also automate users, services, boot targets, networking, storage, RAID, encryption, and package management. They learn to rely on built-in documentation, including ansible-doc examples and Red Hat system role READMEs, rather than outside help. The result is a team that can standardize Linux administration, reduce configuration drift, and support RHCE certification readiness.

Knowledge

• How Ansible's core components fit together (configuration file, inventory, modules, and YAML playbooks) and when to use an ad hoc command versus a playbook
• How variables, secrets, loops, conditionals, and Jinja templates make one playbook work across servers with different requirements
• How facts, registered variables, and handlers work, and why idempotency matters when managing services and boot targets
• How Ansible roles and RHEL system roles (including their README files and examples) standardize repeatable configuration
• How Ansible Automation Controller fits into enterprise Ansible environments at an introductory level
• How the RHCE exam is structured, with grading based on the work done from the Ansible control node

Ability

• Build an Ansible control node and inventory, then verify connectivity to managed hosts
• Write multi-task and multi-play playbooks that automate users, services, scheduled tasks, networking, packages, and archives
• Automate storage setup, including file systems, mounting, RAID, and encryption
• Apply security controls such as SELinux configuration through playbooks
• Troubleshoot playbooks using the debug module, YAML syntax checks, and error handling; use documentation to look up module details; and run playbooks with Ansible Navigator
• Complete exam-style tasks, such as configuring time synchronization with a system role, in a rebuilt lab environment