Learn Network Automation
Network Automation is the practice of using software methodologies to automate network device configurations to increase network management efficiencies. Network Automation and Programmability are skills that network engineers of today and the future are going to need to know.
All the posts below cover all my recent projects and findings on this exciting journey.
Starting with What is network automation?
All the way to How to install Ansible Tower.
Configuration management of network devices is one of the most popular first use cases. With the rapid growth of cloud networks, and virtual devices network management can no longer be performed with manual processes.
If you are looking for training, check out my Network Automation Course
Covering Ansible playbooks, Cisco configuration templates using Jinja2 and a bit of Git, Github & F5.
Learn the skills that you need to become a Network Automation Engineer. (Other Network Automation Blogs are available!)
Use Ansible Playbooks for configuration management on your network devices. Manage Cisco IOS, Arista EOS, streamline network operations.
My latest post on Network Automation Tools will show you all the open source tools being used today.
Most Popular Pages:
Ansible Hosts File
Ansible is a skill that a lot of people are looking to master. If you want to get started Ansible is a great place to start.
My posts will mainly deal with Ansible Cisco Configuration but also some posts on F5
We will also be covering automation tools, example scripts and using Python to perform simple tasks.
There will be many examples of code and playbooks.
What is Netmiko in Python used for? Netmiko is a multi-vendor Python library written by Kirk Byers. It is based on Paramiko and used to simplify SSH connections to network devices. It is multi-vendor including Cisco, Arista, and Juniper Networks How to install Netmiko in Ubuntu The video above demonstrates how to install Netmiko and …
Terraform Tutorial for Beginners Terraform is an open-source infrastructure as code software tool created by Hashicorp. Used to define and provision infrastructure using a declaritive configuration language know as Hashicorp Configuration Language (HCL) or JSON – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraform_(software) Infrastructure as Code Infrastructure as code is the concept of managing your infrastructure in a single file or …
Install Ansible AWX 17.0.1 on Ubuntu 20.04 using Docker AWX is the upstream open source version of Ansible Tower, you can install it for free and use it for free forever. However there is no support. If you wanted a supported version you need to look at Ansible Tower For this tutorial I am going …
Terraform Associate Study Guide This post will detail my journey to passing the Terraform Associate Certification exam. There is not currently an official course, but there are plenty of courses available on platforms such as Udemy, Cloud Guru & Pluralsight. Hashicorp have a very thorough guide of the exam objectives and documentation here: https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/terraform/associate-review Terraform …
What are the differences between Terraform and Ansible? Terraform is an open-source tool developed by HashiCorp that allows users to manage cloud services through a language named HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). Currently, Terraform supports 200 providers, including public cloud, private cloud, and SaaS providers. There is also a paid product called Terraform Enterprise which provides …
Should Network Engineers Learn Python? A question I get asked all the time is “Should network engineers learn Python?” The short answer is yes, but as with all things IT it depends! Here are a few quick reasons why I think you should learn Python. The networking community has chosen Python as the language of …
Cisco pyATS Genie Tutorial pyATS was (and still is) an in-house Cisco Python testing framework that has been made open source and is now available to you to perform your network testing. Cisco currently run over 2 million test runs per month! It was released to Devnet in 2017. Genie is the library that contains …
Anyone looking to learn Python Network Automation will usually turn to YouTube first. So I have put together this list of my top resources on YouTube to learn Python to perform network automation tasks. 1. Greg Mueller // Playlist Greg Mueller has put together a great playlist here that walks you through setting up a …
Python for Network Engineers In this post I will cover in detail some Python scripts for network engineers that I use on nearly a daily basis. For each example that needs connectivity I will be using a basic topology of 20 x CSR routers. I will also be using Netmiko to connect to the network …
In this Python virtual environment tutorial I will show you how to manage different projects that might require different versions of packages or modules. By default all packages or modules are installed in the same location (this location is dependent on your system). If you are writing a project that requires version 1.0 of a …
Have you got 100’s or 1000’s of Cisco switches or routers to perform a software upgrade on? Looking for a simple way to upgrade Cisco IOS remotely? Or perform the task without manually logging into each device? Ansible is a great way to perform software upgrades on network devices. This Ansible Playbook will upgrade your …
I reached out to leaders in the field of network automation and asked them one simple question. “What did you wish you knew before starting to learn network automation?” and or “Give me a tip on how you started to learn network automation.” The responses I got below are listed literally in the order I …
Master Ansible and Become a Network Automation Ninja You can learn all my Ansible tips and tricks that I have been using for the past 3 years. I’ve boiled it all down into a simple easy to follow step by step Ansible training course which is focused purely on network automation. Ansible Training for Network …
If you have been using Ansible for a while you will have wondered if there is a way to encrypt password information? There is it’s called Ansible Vault. In this Ansible Vault tutorial I will show you how to keep all your password and sensitive data in encrypted files within Ansible. For information this tutorial …
Do you want to learn network automation and network programmability but don’t know where to start? The role of the network engineer is changing, and at a rapid pace. Do you feel like if you are not using Ansible or writing Python scripts to automate your network that you are falling behind and your job …
What is Nornir? The Nornir Python automation framework is written in Python and designed to be used for network automation tasks. It is much faster and gives you more flexibility than it’s friend Ansible. Ansible, which is also written in Python is currently the most popular network automation tool in use today but it does …
Ansible or Python? In the world of networking right now there are many discussions about which network automation tools are the best. But one of the most asked questions is Ansible or Python? Ansible is considered to be the tool of choice for most network engineers who are getting started with network programmability. Python is …
The networking industry is telling us all that we need to learn Python, we need to do network programming, we need to learn network automation, the CLI is dead! But for most of us nothing has changed and we are thinking what is all the fuss about? The truth is that using Python for Network …
Network automation is the process of making configuration changes to your network devices using software tools and code rather than manually configuring each device one by one. Using tools such as Ansible or Python, network engineers of today are automating repetitive tasks to ensure a more consistent predictable method of making network changes, provisioning new …
One of the main features of using Ansible for Network Automation is the use of roles, and there are many advantages of using Ansible roles which I will describe below. When you start to build up a collection of playbooks you will soon discover that there will be duplication and you find yourself writing or …
Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) is an orchestration platform for hybrid networks. It decouples network services from specific components, while automatically configuring the network according to service specifications. Cisco NSO Download NSO is free to download for non-production use! To download your trial version of Cisco NSO head over to https://developer.cisco.com/site/nso/ This will download nso-4.7.linux.x86_64.zip You need to …
What is the Ansible Host File? The Ansible Hosts File or Inventory file tells Ansible about the hosts that it can connect to. For Ansible to automate a Linux Server, Network device or Cloud server it has to exist within the inventory (also known as the Ansible hosts file) and saved in either YAML or …
NetYCE NetYCE is a network orchestration framework specifically developed for network engineers to build their own network automation solutions in no time without coding. The framework is an ideal alternative to Ansible and Python if you prefer using your network engineering skills to build network automation use-cases over learning programming skills. At the same time, …
What does a Network Automation Engineer do? As a Network Automation Engineer you will be expected to use devops methodologies and manage your network using software and not just the CLI. You will work towards reducing manual workload through automation and improve processes and tools. The big question I get asked all the time is “What does a Network Automation Engineer actually do?” …
