Safari Live Training - Ansible for Managing Network Devices

Source code for the training course. Please contact me with any questions. Before beginning, be sure you know how to use git at a basic level on your computer. For this course, only Linux platforms should be used for the control/development machine.

Contact information:
Email: njrusmc@gmail.com
Twitter: @nickrusso42518

• Download Instructions
• Usage
• Testing

Download Instructions

The easiest way to consume this code is to clone it using SSH or HTTPS.

SSH: git clone git@github.com:nickrusso42518/slt-ans-networks

or

HTTPS: git clone https://github.com/nickrusso42518/slt-ans-networks.git

After cloning, you should see the following file system structure:

$ tree
.
├── getter
│   ├── ansible.cfg
│   ├── getter_playbook.yml
│   ├── group_vars
│   │   └── routers.yml
│   ├── hosts.yml
│   └── README.md
├── LICENSE
├── Makefile
├── ntp
│   ├── ansible.cfg
│   ├── group_vars
│   │   └── routers.yml
│   ├── hosts.yml
│   ├── ntp_playbook.yml
│   ├── README.md
│   └── templates
│       └── ntp_config.j2
├── README.md
└── requirements.txt

Ensure you have Python 3.6 or newer installed along with pip.

Visit https://www.python.org/downloads/ to download Python.

sudo python -m ensurepip

or

sudo easy_install pip

You can install the specific packages (really just Ansible and a YAML linter) using the following command:

pip install -r requirements.txt

You should have access to the ansible command on the correct version.

$ ansible --version
ansible 2.8.7
  config file = /home/ec2-user/racc/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/home/ec2-user/.ansible/plugins/modules',
    '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location =
    /home/ec2-user/environments/racc287/lib/python3.7/site-packages/ansible
  executable location = /home/ec2-user/environments/racc287/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.7.3 (default, Aug 27 2019, 16:56:53)
    [GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-36)]

Usage

There are two main subdirectories, each containing their own project files. The getter/ subdirectory is a basic configuration runner and the ntp/ subdirectory performs basic line-level NTP configuration management.

These individual projects have their own READMEs which provides more information about their main purpose in this course.

Testing

A GNU Makefile with phony targets is used for testing this codebase. There is currently only one step:

• lint: Runs YAML linter. This captures any syntax or styling errors with the Ansible playbooks or variable files.

You can run make lint to execute the testing manually. Because these two projects are used for reference only and are not cloned into the course, more detailed testing is not needed. They are kept as simple as possible for learning purposes. The production playbooks racc and natm have more comprehensive testing via CI.