Mastering Ansible Automation for Network Engineers

Learn Ansible Automation skills from scratch to an advanced level for automating your Network.

Gain an in-depth understanding of Ansible Playbook and Task Options
For attending this course you don’t need any prior coding experience.

100% Hands-on demonstration of the concepts using Network Automation Usecases

The IDE is VS Code and Cisco devices will be used for demonstrating most of the device interactions.(vIOS, IOS-XE)

Below are the topics in high level

• The course will be starting with how to setup Lab for Ansible Network Automation Practice

• Install and Setup Ubuntu OS VM for ansible

• Setup VSCode for SSH remote development

• Ansible installation in the Python VIrtual Environment

• Ansible Core and Community difference

• Inventory and Config file setup

• YAML File ,Playbook fundamentals and Ansible Lint

• SSH Keybased Authentication to Cisco devices from Ansible

• Ansible Vault for encrypting files and variables

• Demonstration of Ansible Vault ID

• group_vars and host_vars

• Handle device specific variables and configurations effectively

• Explore advanced features of Ansible CLI

• cisco ios_facts and ios_commands module

• cisco ios_config module explained in detail

• Cisco config diff, parent command, before, after, match and replace options

• ios config backup options

• Configuration backup and save option

• Cisco ios resource modules

• cisco interfaces, l3_interfaces and l2_interfaces resource module

• cisco ios_user and static_route module

• CLI Parsers

• pyATS, ntc_templates and TextFSM Parsers

• Ansible  Magic Variables

• hostvars and play_vars

• set_fact vs vars explained

• Ansible Variable precedence explained in detail

• Ansible filter Plugins

• default, ternary, dict2items, items2dict filters

• to_json, from_json, to_yaml, from_yaml  filters

• zip, combine, map,json_query(using JMES Path) filters

• ip_address, url and datetime filters

• list operations and string manipulation using filters

• RegEX Filters

• Regex search, find_all and replace filters

• Jinja2 templates example

• jinja2 for loop and include option

• jinja2 in ios_config module

• embed code in jinja2 template

• lookup Plugins

• file lookup, template lookup plugins

• vars, env and pipe lookup plugins

• Loops and Conditionals :  loops, until and when

• Play Options

  • ansible play strategies, forks and serial

  • debugger for effective troubleshooting

  • host order, log_path

  • tags and limit option

  • check_mode

• Task Options

  • delegate_to

  • run_once

  • ignore_erros and failed when

  • changed_when and no_log

• use handlers and listen option

• block and rescue for exception handling

• assert option

• How to install ansible collections: using galaxy command, requirements file and github

• How to create roles and add tasks to respective directories

• Detailed explanation of ansible include vs import

• include_tasks vs import tasks

• include_role vs import role

• import_playbook module

• how to create ansible custom modules

  • convert facts to csv file using custom module which uses python csv in the backend

  • how to pass module args to custom module

  • how to return data using custom module

• REST API from Ansible

  • how to use URI Module for REST API

  • YANG Suite introduction

  • REST API from Postman

  • Convert POSTMAN REST request to Ansible URI task

  • Initiate REST – GET, PUT,POST PATCH and DELETE Operations from Ansible

  • How to configure Cisco device using REST API

  • how to save config using rest API

  • Parse config using REST API

• Extra Learning Topic(AWX)

  • Install AWX in Minikube for learning

  • Basics of Ansible execution environment (Podman)