In this chapter, we looked at how Ansible can be used for server-side configuration management of network devices and looked at some of the industry leading network vendors, such as Arista, Cisco, and Juniper, who have all changed their operational models to use open standards and protocols that are well-suited to automation.
After reading this chapter, you should now be familiar with networking operating system from Cisco, Juniper, and Arista. The Ansible configuration management tool and concepts, such as Ansible Inventory, Ansible Modules, Ansible Playbooks, Ansible Roles, and Ansible var files and Jinja2 templates. Readers should also be familiar with Ansible Galaxy, the core Ansible modules available for network automation and methodologies to manage network devices using Ansible.
This chapter gave readers an understanding of use cases where tools such as Ansible can be used to automate everyday network operations that are carried out by network engineers. It should also give...