Getting Started with Ansible- Programming and Playbooks - (by NetworkChuck and Jesse Keating)

* I am using an Ubuntu server, which means I could skip epel-release and simply install Ansible from these instructions.

Opening the configuration file in vi (as su, or you won't be able to overwrite), I'm pleasantly surprised it didn't take me more than 3 minutes to find #host_key_checking = False. The # means 'this is a comment', so let's take that away so it can work with the demo.

Let's configure;

This is openly available information over here.

Let's ping it; Yes, apparently my Ansible was using older Python for backwards compatibility.
But we did successfully ping the router!

First bit of automation = ✅

With a bit of manipulation, we can run some good old Cisco IOS commands like 'show ip int brief';

The command is sudo ansible router -m ios_command -a "commands='show ip int brief'"

I revisited this the next day and added the second router;

I got a really funky error pointing out a mistype on "Line 47, point 1" - I put a space between [routers] and the machines, and that cleared things up.

I'm not here to spoil the entire video for you, and there is much more. Go try it yourself!

Someone shared an Ansible course on LinkedIn that I looked at - let's make a playbook. An Ansible Playbook is the configuration deployment written in YAML.

Let's pretend that the Wi-Fi in Hogwarts was installed smoothly, and has been chugging away for awhile. The larger routers connected to the ISP need updating. Let's keep pretending that the ISP just doesn't want to do it, and so, it falls upon us.

You can see a (very simple) Playbook I created here.

Comments

Connecting IoT Devices to a Registration Server (Packet Tracer, Cisco)

In Packet Tracer, a demo software made by Cisco Systems. It certainly has changed a lot since 2016. It's almost an Olympic feat to even get started with it now, but it does look snazzy. This is for the new CCNA, that integrates, among other things, IoT and Automation, which I've worked on here before. Instructions here . I don't know if this is an aspect of "Let's make sure people are paying attention and not simply following blindly", or an oversight - The instructions indicate a Meraki Server, when a regular one is the working option here. I have to enable the IoT service on this server. Also, we assign the server an IPv4 address from a DHCP pool instead of giving it a static one. For something that handles our IoT business, perhaps that's safer; Getting a new IPv4 address every week or so is a minimal step against an intruder, but it is a step. There are no devices associated with this new server; In an earlier lab (not shown), I attached them to 'H

Securing Terraform and You Part 1 -- rego, Tfsec, and Terrascan

9/20: The open source version of Terraform is now OpenTofu Sometimes, I write articles even when things don't work. It's about showing a learning process. Using IaC means consistency, and one thing you don't want to do is have 5 open S3 buckets on AWS that anyone on the internet can reach. That's where tools such as Terrascan and Tfsec come in, where we can make our own policies and rules to be checked against our code before we init. As this was contract work, I can't show you the exact code used, but I can tell you that this blog post by Cesar Rodriguez of Cloud Security Musings was quite helpful, as well as this one by Chris Ayers . The issue is using Rego; I found a cool VS Code Extension; Terrascan Rego Editor , as well as several courses on Styra Academy; Policy Authoring and Policy Essentials . The big issue was figuring out how to tell Terrascan to follow a certain policy; I made it, put it in a directory, and ran the program while in that directory

Create a Simple Network (Packet Tracer) + A Walkthrough

Again; I've done this, but now there's so many new things, I'm doing it again. The truly new portions were...everything on the right side of this diagram; The cloud needed a coax connector and a copper Ethernet connector. It's all easy to install, turn off the cloud (Weird), install the modules. Getting the Cable section of Connections was an unusual struggle - The other drop down menu had nothing within. It required going into the Ethernet options and setting the Provider Network to 'cable', which is the next step AFTER the drop-downs. The rest was typical DHCP and DNS setups, mainly on the Cisco server down there. The post is rather short - How about adding a video to it? Find out what A Record means - This site says 'Maps a name to an IP address', which is DNS. So it's another name for DNS? You can change them (presumably in a local context) to associate an IP address to another name.

RUN TCP/IP | Morgan Lucas' Tech Portfolio

Search This Blog