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
• PaloAlto Firewall Galaxy Collections Examples
• PaloAlto Address Objects, Object Groups and Security Rule automation using Ansible
• 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)