There are many infrastructure automation framework besides Ansible, namely Chef, Puppet, and SaltStack. Each framework offers its own unique features and models, and there is no right tool that fits all the organizations. In this section, I would like to list out some of the advantages of Ansible and why I think this is a good tool for network automation.
From a network engineering point of view, rather than any one point below, I believe it is the combination of all the following reasons that makes Ansible ideal for network automation.
Unlike some of its peers, Ansible does not require a strict master-client model. There is no software or agent to be installed on the client that communicates back to the server. As you can see from the previous example, instead of relying on remote host agents, Ansible uses SSH to push its changes to the remote host. This is huge for network device management, as network vendors are typically reluctant to put third-party...