What is Ansible?

Ansible is a simple automation language or you can say application that can perfectly automate IT infrastructure or network infrastructure.

Ansible is a free-software platform for configuring and managing computers or network devices which combines multi-node software deployment, ad hoc task execution, and configuration management. (description taken from wikipedia)

It can also be used for network management. Like Puppet or Chef which requires agent to be installed on host system but Ansible does not require an agent on the host system. It uses SSH for transport to communicate with the host. When Ansible was first developed it was used primarily for server administration but in the last few years of development more and more network modules have been added to the software. Currently these Network vendor devices can be manage by Ansible. Current version is Ansible Ver 2.4 :

A10 Networks

Cisco ACI

Aireos

AOS

Aruba Networks

Cisco ASA

AVI

Bigswitch

Bigswitch

Citrix

Cloudengine

Cloudvision

Cumulus

Dell OS

EOS

F5 Networks

FortiOS

IOS

IOS-XR

JUNOS

NX-OS

Netconf

PAN OS (Paloalto Networks)

Radware

Vyos

If you notice, above list is very long but I am interested mostly on Cisco and Juniper network devices.

There are generally two methods to automate network devices. First is to learn Python and then automate the things. Second is to learn Ansible and do automation. For network engineer like us , learning Python has high learning curve. Whereas learning Ansible is quite easy as compare to learn Python.

Ansible is a skill that all Network Engineers should learn and master. It will save you lot more time to automate task which you do on daily basis.

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SuperPuTTY for EVE-NG

To use SuperPuTTY as default client for telnet in Eve-NG for multi tab console

When we click on Router or Switch in EVE-NG by default console open in CMD. Here I posting a method to use SuperPutty with EVE-NG so that you can use TAB function of SuperPutty.
You need to edit registry
Enable handling of telnet://hostname:port/ URLs on the command line. With this feature, you can now set SuperPuTTY as the default handler for Telnet URLs
If you run the Registry Editor (Start->Run->regedit.exe) and set the value in:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\telnet\shell\open\command to be: "\path\to\SuperPutty.exe"
(with the full pathname of your SuperPuTTY executable)

In my case it like this :

C:\Program Files (x86)\SuperPuTTY\SuperPutty.exe %1

Second most important thing :

Select "Only allow single instance of SuperPutty to run" in SuperPutty options (Tools > Options)

And in GUI options , select Tab Text : "Dynamic"

And Finally you will get the multi tab console in Superp…

Install Linux in Eve-NG

Install Linux in Eve-NG :
You can choose any of Linux image from the pack below and simply upload into EVE. Download your preferred image from this link:Download Linux Images Here (This Link is Provided by EVE - NG) 2. Download your desirable image 3. Using WinSCP or FileZilla SSH (TCP 22) to your EVE and upload downloaded image to the location: /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/ 4. Using Putty or other telnet client, CLI SSH (TCP 22) to your EVE and go to location: cd /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/ 5. Unzip your uploaded image file, make sure you are using right name of uploaded image. Example for ubuntu desktop image below. tar xzvf linux-ubuntu-desktop-16.04.4.tar.gz 6. Remove raw zipped image file from EVE rm -f linux-ubuntu-desktop-16.04.4.tar.gz 7. Fix permissions /opt/unetlab/wrappers/unl_wrapper -a fixpermissions 6. Repeat this procedure for each downloaded image, expecting right image name in commands
Ready to go images recommeneded settings: IMPORTANT NOTE: Before you start Li…

NAT Cloud in EVE-NG

NAT Cloud in EVE-NG

I want to share with you how to create a NAT cloud in the EVE-NG community edition. Essentially, this is a virtual network with a DHCP server, which will allow NAT connections over the management interface of the EVE-NG VM for Internet access.

Interface, DHCP Server and NAT First of all, we need to create a network which can be used in the topology. I’ll be using the predefined pnet9 interface (Cloud 9 network) for this, but any other interface will do. 1 2 3 ip address add192.168.255.1/24dev pnet9 echo1

First look of Open NX-OS

Cisco NX-OS is the network operating system that is used in Cisco Nexus switches. These Nexus switches from Cisco are built for DATA-CENTERS. In this post I will give you a brief idea regarding the NX-OS operating system. NX-OS has been evolved from SAN-OS which was originally developed for MDS switches by Cisco only. These MDS switches are used for storage network.

Cisco NX-OS is purely based on Micro-kernel Linux where as traditional Cisco IOS is also based on Linux but with Monolithic kernel. I will tell you the difference between these two types of kernel below in this post because it is the key difference between NX-OS and IOS.
Monolithic Kernel :
Monolithic kernel is a single large process running entirely in a single address space or memory space. It is a single static binary file. All kernel services exists and executes in the kernel address space. If one process having some problem then it will effect all other processes and may interrupt the complete kernel flow. As an ex…

copy IOS from FTP server for cisco switch upgrade

These are the commands to copy IOS from FTP to Flash:
Filezilla SERVER :

copy ftp://username:password@ftp-server-ip/IOS-name.bin flash:

Example :

copy ftp://cisco:cisco@192.168.1.1/c2960x-universalk9-mz.152-4.E6.bin flash:

SolarWinds SFTP & SCP Server (When we need to copy IOS to Flash using Secured channel like SCP or SFTP:

copy scp://<User>:<Password>@<Server-IP>/<File-name> flash0://<File-Name>

Jumbo frames in Nexus 5000

When we connect storage devices or some special requirements we need to change port MTU size. In Cisco 4500 and Cisco 6500 we have a option to enable MTU size per interface basis. But in Nexus 5000 it is only enable on full switch. This means all ports will be effected by MTU size. I don't know why this advance Nexus 5000 doesn't have option to change MTU per interface basis. There are simple commands to activate the same :
In this below configuration we are changing MTU size to 9216 :

switch(config)#policy-map type network-qos jumbo switch(config-pmap-nq)#class type network-qos class-default switch(config-pmap-c-nq)#mtu 9216 switch(config-pmap-c-nq)#exit switch(config-pmap-nq)#exit switch(config)#system qos switch(config-sys-qos)#service-policy type network-qos jumbo

We need to create QOS policy which can filter MTU with size 9216. After you apply this policy, All ports will use 9216 MTU. You doesn't need to restart the switch. There is one catch in it :
switch# show inter…

Connecting the missing DOTS....!!!

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