Introduction Ansible is an open-source, powerful, and simple tool for client-server and network device automation. Ansible is agent-less, which means nothing to install on a client only Python is installed and SSH is enabled on the remote host.
Introduction Vagrant is for virtual machines what Docker is for containers. Vagrant is a wrapper for different hypervisor programs like VMware Workstation Pro, VMware Player, VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, etc. Vagrant uses a simple text-based configuration file called Vagrantfile to quickly set up a development environment with one of the supported virtual machine providers/hypervisors.
Automation with Docker It was far easier to learn how to use Docker than to dive into all the details of an application. Using Docker allows you to leverage pre-built, ready-to-use container images. If an application consists of multiple components (i.e. a database, a front-end and a back-end) you can deploy multiple containers and link them.
Docker networking overview lab In Docker networking, we will learn some basic concepts and prepares you to design and deploy your applications to take full advantage of these capabilities.
What is Docker? Docker is software that runs on Linux and Windows. It creates, manages, and can even orchestrate containers. The software is currently built from various tools from the open-source project
What is Napalm? NAPALM (Network Automation and Programmability Abstraction Layer with Multi-vendor support) is a Python library that implements a set of functions to interact with different network device Operating Systems using a unified API. Unified API means the same code is used to configure multi-vendor devices.
Protecting sensitive variables with vault
YAML Introduction YAML is the abbreviated form of “YAML Ain’t markup language” is a data serialization language which is designed to be human-friendly and works well with other programming languages for everyday tasks. YAML is a less complex than XML or JSON and it allows you to provide configuration settings.
Ansible and Python3 venv module This is a module shipped by Python3 to create a virtual environment, it creates and used python3 to build the environment. we are going to use this module and deploy multiple Ansible version on same control node, so that even if we have to contact the managed hosts with old python version or for some deprecated feature or any latest one, we are not bounded to dep...
Ansible Inventory YAML Format Our last inventory file was the INI format. There is also another format called .yaml or .yml which is more readable and may be required depending on the version of Ansible or module. Therefore, it is a good idea to learn how to create an inventory file in YAML format.
Ansible Configuration and Creating Inventory File Before we start using Ansible for network automation, there is one more step we need to prepare Ansible. That is preparing Ansible configuration file and inventory file.
Introduction GNS3 is used by hundreds of thousands of network engineers worldwide to emulate, configure, test and troubleshoot virtual and real networks. GNS3 allows you to run a small topology consisting of only a few devices on your laptop, to those that have many devices hosted on multiple servers or even hosted in the cloud.
What is Netmiko? Netmiko is a multi-vendor library to simplify Paramiko SSH connections to network devices. Netmiko supports a wide range of devices. These devices fall into three categories, see supported platforms on Github.
Paramiko Using telnet in a lab environment for practice or in a fully isolated private network is recommended, but in a production or public network, telnet is vulnerable to cyber attack.
Pexpect Pexpect makes Python a better tool for controlling other applications.
What is Network Automation? Network automation is the process of automating the configuration, management and operations of a computer network. The tasks that are normally done by the network or system administrator can be automated using a number of tools and technologies such as Python and Ansible.
Introduction A vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases production parity, and makes the “works on my machine” excuse a relic of the past.
Automation with Docker It was far easier to learn how to use Docker than to dive into all the details of an application. Using Docker allows you to leverage pre-built, ready-to-use container images. If an application consists of multiple components (i.e. a database, a front-end and a back-end) you can deploy multiple containers and link them.
Docker networking overview lab In Docker networking, we will learn some basic concepts and prepares you to design and deploy your applications to take full advantage of these capabilities.
Python-dotenv (Keep your secrets safe) Do you know how to keep your secrets safe during development and production? In this article, I am going to guide you on how to work with SECRETS and KEYS without exposing them to the outside world, and keep them safe during development.
What is Napalm? NAPALM (Network Automation and Programmability Abstraction Layer with Multi-vendor support) is a Python library that implements a set of functions to interact with different network device Operating Systems using a unified API. Unified API means the same code is used to configure multi-vendor devices.
Ansible and Python3 venv module This is a module shipped by Python3 to create a virtual environment, it creates and used python3 to build the environment. we are going to use this module and deploy multiple Ansible version on same control node, so that even if we have to contact the managed hosts with old python version or for some deprecated feature or any latest one, we are not bounded to dep...
Reading and Writing Files Python has several functions for creating, reading, updating, and deleting files.
What is Netmiko? Netmiko is a multi-vendor library to simplify Paramiko SSH connections to network devices. Netmiko supports a wide range of devices. These devices fall into three categories, see supported platforms on Github.
Lists Python knows a number of compound data types, used to group together other values. The most versatile is the list, which can be written as a list of comma-separated values (items) between square brackets. Lists might contain items of different types, but usually the items all have the same type.
for loop in python Python’s for statement iterates over the items of any sequence (a list or a string), in the order that they appear in the sequence. For example:
Paramiko Using telnet in a lab environment for practice or in a fully isolated private network is recommended, but in a production or public network, telnet is vulnerable to cyber attack.
Pexpect Pexpect makes Python a better tool for controlling other applications.
What is Network Automation? Network automation is the process of automating the configuration, management and operations of a computer network. The tasks that are normally done by the network or system administrator can be automated using a number of tools and technologies such as Python and Ansible.
Python Virtual Environments A Python virtual environment is an environment where you can install 3rd party packages for testing without affecting the system Python installation. There are several different ways to create Python virtual environments. We will focus on the following two methods:
What is python? Python is a clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.
What is Napalm? NAPALM (Network Automation and Programmability Abstraction Layer with Multi-vendor support) is a Python library that implements a set of functions to interact with different network device Operating Systems using a unified API. Unified API means the same code is used to configure multi-vendor devices.
Ansible Configuration and Creating Inventory File Before we start using Ansible for network automation, there is one more step we need to prepare Ansible. That is preparing Ansible configuration file and inventory file.
Introduction GNS3 is used by hundreds of thousands of network engineers worldwide to emulate, configure, test and troubleshoot virtual and real networks. GNS3 allows you to run a small topology consisting of only a few devices on your laptop, to those that have many devices hosted on multiple servers or even hosted in the cloud.
How to install a tap0 interface in Linux for GNS3 After installation of GNS3, we will install loopback adapter on our Ubuntu systems, so that we can connect to devices’s in GNS3 from our host OS.
What is Netmiko? Netmiko is a multi-vendor library to simplify Paramiko SSH connections to network devices. Netmiko supports a wide range of devices. These devices fall into three categories, see supported platforms on Github.
Paramiko Using telnet in a lab environment for practice or in a fully isolated private network is recommended, but in a production or public network, telnet is vulnerable to cyber attack.
Pexpect Pexpect makes Python a better tool for controlling other applications.
What is Network Automation? Network automation is the process of automating the configuration, management and operations of a computer network. The tasks that are normally done by the network or system administrator can be automated using a number of tools and technologies such as Python and Ansible.
Legacy SSH Algorithm and Cipher in Cisco Device’s In this blog, I’m showing you how to enable the legacy SSH algorithm and cipher option on your machine.
How to Connect Windows Host PC with Your Device in GNS3
Linux Networking Commands In this memo, I’m showing Linux networking commands to remember as a network engineer/technician.
Overview of LANs The term Ethernet refers to a family of LAN standards that define physical and data-link layers of the world’s most popular wired LAN technology. The cabling, the connectors of the cables, the protocol rules, to create an Ethernet LAN.
TCP/IP Networking Model A set of protocols, physical requirements, and logical rules that devices must follow to communicate with other network devices.
What is a network? A computer network is two or more computers to share resources. A network is a collection of computers, servers, network devices, peripherals, or other devices connected to one another to allow the sharing of data.
Introduction Ansible is an open-source, powerful, and simple tool for client-server and network device automation. Ansible is agent-less, which means nothing to install on a client only Python is installed and SSH is enabled on the remote host.
Introduction Vagrant is for virtual machines what Docker is for containers. Vagrant is a wrapper for different hypervisor programs like VMware Workstation Pro, VMware Player, VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, etc. Vagrant uses a simple text-based configuration file called Vagrantfile to quickly set up a development environment with one of the supported virtual machine providers/hypervisors.
Introduction A vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases production parity, and makes the “works on my machine” excuse a relic of the past.
Protecting sensitive variables with vault
YAML Introduction YAML is the abbreviated form of “YAML Ain’t markup language” is a data serialization language which is designed to be human-friendly and works well with other programming languages for everyday tasks. YAML is a less complex than XML or JSON and it allows you to provide configuration settings.
Ansible Inventory YAML Format Our last inventory file was the INI format. There is also another format called .yaml or .yml which is more readable and may be required depending on the version of Ansible or module. Therefore, it is a good idea to learn how to create an inventory file in YAML format.
Legacy SSH Algorithm and Cipher in Cisco Device’s In this blog, I’m showing you how to enable the legacy SSH algorithm and cipher option on your machine.
How to Connect Windows Host PC with Your Device in GNS3
Manage GitHub and Gitlab accounts on a single machine with SSH keys on Linux For this example, We will use the same email address to produce two different SSH keys:
What is Git? Git is a distributed version control system (VCS) that maintains a history of changes to files for reference and rolls back a change. It is software for tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers who are collaborating on the same source code, and widely used, released under GNU GPL v2 license.
Introduction In this short blog, I’m showing you how to set up a vim editor for Python and YAML programming languages. In automation for networking, Python and YAML are used most frequently.
Introduction Vim is a free and open-source, screen-based text editor program. In many Linux distributions is the default text editor. In this blog, I’m showing you the vim text editor commands to be more productive using vim as a beginner, because vim is a great choice among Linux users but is difficult to use as a newbie.
Ansible Basic and Installation Ansible modules support a wide range of vendors, device types, and actions, so you can manage your entire network with a single automation tool. Ansible handles communication between control node and managed nodes through multiple protocols:
What is Ansible? Ansible is a configuration management system. Ansible allows you to automate and simplify the configuration, maintenance, and deployment of servers, services, software, and more.
Open Shortest Path First, Short Brief Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is link-state (OSPFv2 for IPv4) routing protocol for the Internet Protocol (IP) network. OSPF determines the best path (route) in topology at the cost of egress interface (out interface) bandwidth, delay, and load. OSPF falls into the group of interior gateway protocols (IGPs).
Introduction Productivity tools on Linux often include both a status line and a prompt. The function of a status line is to display important information relevant to the program’s current context, and a prompt identifies where a program is expecting some input from the user. Some good application examples that utilize these features include the Linux shell and Vim.