As many of you know, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a highly flexible IT automation platform that can automate your Linux and Windows instances, your VMware private cloud, your AWS, Azure or Google public cloud, and even your security infrastructure. Today I want to write about one of my favorite use-cases; using Ansible Automation Platform for network automation. It provides easy, highly customizable automation for your routers and switches so you can automate them just like any other IT infrastructure.
However, even though network automation has become increasingly popular, most organizations are still managing their network infrastructure manually by a CLI or GUI. Why is this? This manual CLI work often means that network engineers are reactive and constantly drowning with break-fix network issues because of manual mis-configurations, or the inability to implement change quickly and efficiently.
Because network engineers are so busy firefighting in their day job, they don’t have time to look at a new activity like automating, even though automation will save them time and money in the long run. I fundamentally believe that network automation is not an all or nothing situation. You need to adopt network automation in small increments so you can earn yourself, and your team more time. In other words, start small and think big. I put together this video to help network engineers brainstorm five great use cases for network automation. This list is not exhaustive; there are many more use-cases that you can do with network automation, but this is meant to give network administrators an idea of what is possible.
If you’re looking to learn more about a specific use-case, you can jump right to it:
- configuration backup and restore – 00:02:56
- infrastructure awareness – 00:08:54
- scoped configuration management – 00:16:55
- operational state validation – 00:20:59
- automated netops – 00:26:46
- wrap up and next steps – 00:31:10
And while you’re learning about Red Hat Ansible Network Automation, here is some additional content to check out:
- E-Books for Ansible Network Automation:
- Part 1: Modernize Your Network with Red Hat (introductory)
- Part 2: Automate Your Network with Red Hat (technical overview)
- Dafné Mendoza wrote about what’s new: network automation using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.1. Dafné, who has a deep technical background on all things networking, covers all our newest network automation content and how it integrates seamlessly with automation execution environments.
- Ashwini Mahatre recently wrote a two part blog on the ansible.utils Content Collection that explains what is included, and shows you a use case example for using it. This blog walks through retrieving operational state (i.e. show ip bgp route), validating your desired state and remediating a network configuration.
What can I do next?
Whether you are beginning your automation journey or a seasoned veteran, there are a variety of resources to enhance your automation knowledge:
- Self-paced exercises – We have interactive, in-browser exercises to learn and dive into Ansible Automation Platform.
- Trial subscription – Are you ready to install on-premises? Get your own trial subscription for unlimited access to all the components of Ansible Automation Platform.
- Developer license – Did you know that you can get a free developer license to learn in your home lab? Register and get access to all the latest tools, technologies and community that Red Hat has to offer.
- Subscribe to the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform YouTube channel. Be sure to check out our new web series, Automated Live hosted by Colin McNaughton.
- Follow Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform on Twitter – Do you have questions or an automation project you want to show off? Tweet at us!
Originally posted on Ansible Blog
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