You're reading from Network Automation Cookbook Over 100 recipes to effectively configure and manage network infrastructure with Ansible

Product type Paperback

Published in Aug 2025

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781835887981

Length 566 pages

Edition 2nd Edition

Languages

Python

Tools

Ansible

Concepts

Networking

Authors (3):

Christian Adell

Jeffrey Kala

Okasha

View More author details

Table of Contents (23) Chapters

Preface

1. Part 1: Getting Started with Ansible FREE CHAPTER

2. Why Ansible for Network Automation?

3. Building Blocks of Ansible

4. Advanced Ansible Concepts

5. Part 2: Managing Network Infrastructure with Ansible

6. Building Data Center Networks with Arista

7. Automating a Juniper Network Core Using Ansible

8. Managing Nokia SR Devices Using Ansible

9. Administering a Multi-Vendor Network with NAPALM and Ansible

10. Part 3: Managing Cloud Networking with Ansible

11. Deploying and Operating AWS Networking

12. Deploying and Operating Azure Networking

13. Deploying and Operating GCP Networking

14. Part 4: Integrating Ansible

15. Network Validation with Batfish

16. Building a Network Inventory with Nautobot

17. Simplifying Automation with AWX

18. Event-Driven Automation with Ansible

19. Terraform and Ansible Dancing Together

20. Index

21. Other Books You May Enjoy

Appendix - The Lab

Deploying network security groups

Security in cloud environments is essential, and Azure offers various tools and services to help create a secure infrastructure for applications. One such tool is Network Security Groups (NSGs), which act as stateful firewalls that can be attached to VMs or subnets to control traffic flow.

Azure provides default NSGs, which are automatically applied to subnets, offering basic security controls for resources deployed within those subnets. By default, it allows traffic between virtual network CIDR ranges (enabling inter-subnet communication), plus inbound traffic from Azure load balancers and outbound traffic to the internet, finally denying all other traffic.

While these default rules provide basic security, custom NSGs can be used to further refine security policies. Custom NSGs are evaluated based on the priority of each rule (lower values are evaluated first). Once a rule is matched, it is applied to traffic traversing the subnet.

For...