How Ansible manages networking devices
Ansible allows you to manage many different networking devices, including Arista EOS, Cisco ASA, Cisco IOS, Cisco IOS XR, Cisco NX-OS, Dell OS 6, Dell OS 9, Dell OS 10, Extreme EXOS, Extreme IronWare, Extreme NOS, Extreme SLX-OS, Extreme VOSS, F5 BIG-IP, F5 BIG-IQ, Junos OS, Lenovo CNOS, Lenovo ENOS, MikroTik RouterOS, Nokia SR OS, Pluribus Netvisor, and VyOS, as well as all OSs that support NETCONF. As you can imagine, we can make Ansible communicate with them in various ways.
Also, we have to remember that Ansible networking modules run on the controller host (the one where you issued the ansible command), while usually, the Ansible modules run on the target host. This difference is crucial because it allows Ansible to use different connection mechanisms based on the target device type. Remember that even when you have a host with SSH management capabilities (that many switches have), Ansible needs Python to be present on the target host...
