Network Automation with Ansible

In today’s fast-paced IT environment, network automation has become a critical component for maintaining efficient and reliable network operations. Ansible, a powerful open-source automation tool, has emerged as a leader in this domain, offering a robust framework for automating network configuration management. This article explores the benefits of using Ansible for network automation and provides some practical examples to illustrate its capabilities.

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macvlan vs Bridge Interface: Wi-Fi Compatibility and Benefits

The primary difference between a macvlan and a bridge interface solution lies in how they handle network traffic and their compatibility with different types of network interfaces, particularly Wi-Fi. On a consumer notebook, like a ThinkPad it is almost impossible to create a bridge interface, so your KVM virtual machines are unreachable from the host.

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Mastering Docker Networking: Exposing Ports Only to Other Containers

Docker networks are virtual networks created by Docker to enable communication between Docker containers, allowing them to connect to and communicate with each other or to non-Docker workloads. Containers inside the Docker network can talk to each other by sharing packets of information, and each container sees a network interface with an IP address, a gateway, a routing table, DNS services, and other networking details. By default, the container gets an IP address for every Docker network it attaches to, and when a container starts, it can only attach to a single network, using the –network flag. However, you can connect a running container to multiple networks using the docker network connect command.

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Speeding Up Network Configuration In The Lab With Ansible And Templates

Ansible, an open-source automation tool, helps system administrators and DevOps teams to efficiently manage infrastructure and streamline complex tasks. One of Ansible’s powerful features is the use of templates, which allows for the dynamic generation of configuration files and other resources. Here we will go through a real-world network configuration of a small lab environment.

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