Ansible for network management

Core network devices, such as switches, routers, and firewalls, have long had management interfaces, especially in enterprise environments. Command-Line Interfaces (CLIs) have always been popular on such devices as they support scripting, so, as you have already guessed, they lend themselves extremely well to Ansible automation.

Historically, teams have faced a myriad of challenges when managing these devices, including maintaining configuration, coping with the failure/loss of a device, and obtaining support in the event of an issue. Often, companies found themselves locked into a single network vendor (or at best, a small handful) to enable the use of proprietary tools to manage the network. As with any situation where you are locked into a technology, this carries both benefits and drawbacks. Add to this the complexity of software-defined networks that are rapidly changing and evolving, and the challenge becomes even greater. In this section, we...