Gain insights into automating network reconnaissance, orchestrating repetitive changes, and transforming network configuration management. Discover CI/CD pipeline migration for full network automation.

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​​Network automation begins with automating network reconnaissance. This is accomplished by gathering important information from network devices while building a library of dynamic on-demand utilities and generating living documentation. Starting small, the course exhibits the simplicity and elegance of network automation.

Next, you will learn how to automate larger changes that require a high number of repetitive steps. These changes will be executed serially in a specific orchestrated order, making them perfect for an automated solution. After gaining comfort with the new tools, you can fully transform network configuration management to an automated, intent-based, self-documenting system.

The final step is learning how to migrate to a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, thereby fully automating the network.

Automate Your Network

This lesson will use a slightly different network topology compared to the previous hands-on lessons. It will include three **#key# FRR:Free Range Routing #key#** routers, in addition to the three PCs.

Below is a simple illustration showing the topology:



This will allow we to run Ansible tasks on FRR routers as well.

# FRR on Ansible
The playbooks in this lesson use the `frr.frr` ansible module to query information from FRR routers. 

We are using SSH to connect to the routers. The SSH username and password are presently stored in the `/etc/ansible/hosts` file. This is just for demonstration purposes. In production, use some other way to authenticate.

The file `Files/display_config.yml` uses the `ansible_net_config` value to display the current router configuration for all routers. 



Other Ansible values that one may query are listed in the [frr.frr.frr_facts documentation](https://github.com/ansible-collections/frr.frr/blob/main/docs/frr.frr.frr_facts_module.rst). 

Some examples include:

- `ansible_net_version`: The FRR version on the device
- `ansible_net_mem_stats`: Memory statistics for the device
- `ansible_net_hostname`: The hostname of the device


# Running the playbook
In the example below, we have six devices on our network: `PC1`, `PC2`, and `PC3` grouped under `PCs`, and `router1`, `router2`, `router3` grouped under `routers`. Let's take a look at how we can gather information about our FRR devices using Ansible.


Running the widget at the end of the lesson will automatically run the command:
```
ansible-playbook display_config.yml
```
This will run the `display_config.yml` playbook for all devices in the `routers` group.




To limit the output to just a single device we can add the `--limit` flag and provide the IPv4 address of the device we want to single out. 

We can get the IPv4 addresses of our devices by using:
```
cat /etc/ansible/hosts
```

An example of running the playbook with the `--limit` flag is as follows:
```bash
ansible-playbook display_config.yml --limit 172.20.20.2
```
This will limit the task to the device with the provided IP.


> If we want to modify and re-run the playbooks, we may use a console-based text editor (Vim, nano) in the terminal window, then re-issue the `ansible-playbook` command. If you modify the playbooks in the widget's graphical editor, press **"Run"** to update the underlying container with your updated file(s).

Try it out in the widget below:

Let's get some practice on working with FRR routers using Ansible.

Introduction

What Is Network Automation?

Why Automate the Network?

How to Automate the Network

Where to Start with Network Automation

Repository Structure

Network Reconnaissance

Tactical Playbooks

Data Models and Dynamic Templates

Dynamic Intent-Based Documentation

Configuration Management

Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery

Conclusion

Hands-On: Display FRR facts