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)

Why use Python for network automation?

Python is a pretty well-structured and easy programming language available today and targets many areas in technology, web and internet development, data mining and visualization, desktop GUI, analysis, game building, and automation testing; that's why it's called a general purpose language.

So, there are three reasons to choose Python:

  • Readability and ease of use: When you develop using Python, you actually find yourself writing in English. Many keywords and program flows inside Python are structured to have readable statements. Also, Python doesn't require ; or curly braces to start and end blocks, which gives Python a shallow learning curve. Finally, Python has some optional rules, called PEP 8, that tell Python developers how to format their program to have readable code.

You can configure PyCharm to take care of these...