Some time ago I was asked for help to develop a “simple and quick” Python script to monitor the status of a Linux service. They were in the middle of a deployment and they needed something fast. They added, keep the result in a JSON file with the date, serve the directory with HTTP for quick view, and finally post it to ELK for graphics. Ok, this looks simple part by part, but the sum ends up in a very complete solution at the same time! ...
Not so long ago a customer asked me for help on how to block IP addresses on their regional firewalls infrastructure. They needed a solution urgently, since lately there were some severe attacks on other companies in the region, and they didn’t want to be “on the news” too. Having a network engineer available 7x24 to block IP addresses on all the firewalls is not timewise efficient nor effective. It is simply not realistic to get him to work at any time (like midnight) and configure everything in less than 1 hour without errors and back and forths while chatting in the middle of the crisis with the rest of the organization. ...
Even if you don’t fully understand what is an API, it is really easy to leverage their power to have some useful information directly sent to a collaboration platform and receive it on your mobile or PC in real-time. All the tools in use are Free: Python, Slack, and WebEx Teams. In this post, I will show you how to send Cisco ACI faults and events to messages straight to Slack and WebEx Teams. ...
In my previous post, I showed you how easy it is to have a network configuration backup with a GUI and messaging and keep it synchronized with GitHub to see the changes, and also sending messages to Slack and emails when it runs. For this post, I modified the scripts to use a cool Open Source tool named Gogs (Thanks Nikolay Ryzhkov for bringing this tool to my attention). With Gogs you will have a local repository system with the same functionalities as GitHub, so you don’t need to worry about sending your configs outside of your own infrastructure. ...
Continuing with the development of my previous post where we made a very simple and complete solution for local network device configuration backups, including alerts via Slack or email. Now we are going to do some modifications to have a free complete GUI and messaging for Cloud Network configuration backups including the history, comments, and actionable buttons. In the end you will be a simple click away to a full online historic track of all the configuration changes, including comments per line of changed code. Take a look at this short video! ...
Ansible es la plataforma de automatización más adoptada en IT. Esto se debe a que podes utilizarlo sobre prácticamente todos los sistemas operativos Windows, Linux, Redes, etc. Si te podes conectar remotamente al sistema entonces seguramente puedas utilizar Ansible. Y ademas no necesitas instalar un agente en los equipos remotos! Ansible es un producto de RedHat, asique cuenta con un buen desarrollo y soporte, muy buena documentación, y ademas es Open Source, es decir, es gratis, y todos pueden leer y colaborar con el código. ...
Start using Ansible Vault is pretty easy. As usual, there is no magic here, you keep the key in mind or a file somewhere. If you keep it in mind doesn’t sound very practical because you are trying to automate tasks without human intervention and either way you don’t want to type that long key each time. (You can use this method for any kind of file, Ansible or not, for a picture is you like.) ...
I’ve been asked about how to automate a network configuration backup and I read a lot of articles on the internet, but I didn’t find a simple, quick, complete and free setup. So, I made this one. You only need a Linux with Python3 (installed by default) check your version with: $ python3 --version or easy upgradable with: $ python3 --version $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install python3.6 and Ansible, very easy to install. ...
Automation Bots can help IT operations teams day-to-day work, and enhance the interaction between customers and IT members in a standard, fast, and secure way. (Check the use cases from my previous posts, and new ones to come.) Just keep it simple! That’s the key to also enable easy adoption, a low learning curve, easy operability, and maintainability. Let’s talk about those concepts. Cheap: the software is Open Source: Linux, Python, Ansible, Salt, and Slack (not Open Source but with a free account is enough). So it’s better than cheap, it’s free. I will talk more about this later. ...
Find out how you can tremendously simplify IT support no matter where or when. Using an always online Bot per technology now is simple, straightforward and free. You can even chat with it from your cell phone. Continuing with this saga of posts. Now let’s dive into deep technical use cases. I will do it from a networking perspective just because it’s my main field of knowledge, but since Ansible and Salt are multiplatform, the following use cases are multi-platform in a single playbook. ...