The Project That Triggered This Post Recently, I was assigned to a mid-scale network migration spanning three data centers. The architecture was straightforward but labor-intensive: dozens of VRFs, hundreds of point-to-point BGP sessions in a BGP fabric, and a VMware NSX overlay. Despite this modern setup, I was asked to manually write all of the configuration changes as CLI. After coding over 6,000 lines of CLI that night, I paused to reflect: ...
As networks scale and new software updates become available, keeping Cisco devices up to date is crucial for maintaining optimal performance, security, and functionality. However, manually upgrading multiple devices can be time-consuming and prone to errors. That’s where Ansible comes into play, allowing us to automate and streamline the entire upgrade process for Cisco IOS/IOS-XE devices. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a series of Ansible playbooks to automate this task efficiently. ...
I have been working on a project recently to assist a customer in upgrading thousands of devices in their network. Managing such a large-scale upgrade requires automation to ensure consistency, efficiency, and reduced manual intervention. For this project, AWX was selected as the automation UI platform, providing a powerful interface for managing Ansible playbooks, job templates, inventories, and credentials. What is AWX? AWX is the upstream open-source project for Red Hat Ansible Tower. It provides an intuitive web UI for: ...