Network Automation Cookbook provides an overview of the various topics of network automation and how to use software development practices in order to design and operate different networking solutions. We use Ansible as our framework to introduce the topic of network automation and how to manage different vendor equipment using Ansible. In the first section, we outline how to install and configure Ansible specifically for the purpose of network automation. We will explore how we can use Ansible to manage traditional network solutions from various vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, Arista, and F5. Next, we continue to explore how to utilize Ansible to build and scale network solutions from major cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Finally, we outline different supporting open source projects in network automation, such as NetBox, Batfish, and AWX. We outline how to integrate all these tools with Ansible in order to build a complete framework for network automation.
By the end of this book, you will have a solid foundation on how to integrate Ansible with different vendor equipment and how to build a network automation solution based on Ansible. Further, you will understand how to use various open source projects and how to integrate all these solutions with Ansible to build a robust and scalable network automation framework.