Book Image

Hands-On Enterprise Automation with Python

By : Bassem Aly
Book Image

Hands-On Enterprise Automation with Python

By: Bassem Aly

Overview of this book

Hands-On Enterprise Automation with Python starts by covering the set up of a Python environment to perform automation tasks, as well as the modules, libraries, and tools you will be using. We’ll explore examples of network automation tasks using simple Python programs and Ansible. Next, we will walk you through automating administration tasks with Python Fabric, where you will learn to perform server configuration and administration, along with system administration tasks such as user management, database management, and process management. As you progress through this book, you’ll automate several testing services with Python scripts and perform automation tasks on virtual machines and cloud infrastructure with Python. In the concluding chapters, you will cover Python-based offensive security tools and learn how to automate your security tasks. By the end of this book, you will have mastered the skills of automating several system administration tasks with Python.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)

Understanding Python packages

Python core code is actually small by design to maintain simplicity. Most functionalities will be through adding third-party packages and modules.

Module is a Python file that contains functions, statements, and classes that will be used inside your code. The first thing to do is import the module then start to use its functions.

On other hand, a package collects related modules connected to each other and puts them in a single hierarchy. Some large packages such as matplotlib or django have hundreds of modules inside them, and developers usually categorize the related modules into a sub-directories. For example, the netmiko package contains multiple sub-directories and each one contains modules to connect to network devices from different vendors:

Doing that gives the package maintainer the flexibility to add or remove features from each module...