Five Questions: Testing Ansible Playbooks & Roles

Next up in our #AskAnsible posts is Chris Meyers, our Senior Software Engineer.

Learn his take on five key questions we often get regarding testing Ansible Playbooks and roles.

1. Why should I test my Playbooks and roles?

Chris: Ansible Playbooks and roles should be treated like production code. Production code usually has unit tests, functional tests, and integration tests.

  • Unit testing Ansible is equivalent to unit testing SQL queries, you just normally don’t do it. Ansible unit testing belongs at the Python module level.
  • Function testing with Ansible would require a large amount of system state setup or mocking, and it just isn't realistic. 
  • Integration testing is the most useful. It ensures that your intent, expressed in English, is translated correctly to Ansible’s declarative language.
    • Ex: you want to set up a LAMP or MEAN stack. A simple integration test would be to issue an http request that you know exercises the database. The integration test would ensure that your setup is correct from end to end.
2. When should I start testing my Playbooks and roles?

Chris: You can start at any time! Tests can be added for new Playbooks or to existing Playbooks. Testing Continue reading

BFD is not a Fast Convergence mechanism !

BFD is not a fast convergence mechanism. BFD stands for Bidirectional Forwarding Detection. It is an important tool for the IP layer but there is a confusion in the network community about it.   BFD is a failure detection mechanism. Link and  node failures can be detected with it.   Without BFD, detection can be done at Layer […]

The post BFD is not a Fast Convergence mechanism ! appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

Technology Short Take #85

Welcome to Technology Short Take #85! This is my irregularly-published collection of links and articles from around the Internet related to the major data center technologies: networking, hardware, security, cloud computing, applications/OSes, storage, and virtualization. Plus, just for fun, I usually try to include a couple career-related links as well. Enjoy!

Networking

Feedback: Open Networking for Large-Scale Networks

Got this feedback from a network architect attending the Open Networking for Large-Scale Networks webinar:

I used the webinar when preparing for a meeting/discussion with a NOS SW-vendor. In the meeting, my knowledge was completely up-to-speed & I was on the level with the vendor in the discussion! :-)

Obviously, Russ White and Shawn Zandi did a great job based on their real-life hands-on experience (they use whitebox switches @ LinkedIn).

The search for the killer app of unikernels

When a radically different technology comes along it usually takes time before we figure out how to apply it. When we had steam engines running factories there was one engine in each factory with a giant driveshaft running through the whole factory. When the electric engine came along people started replacing the giant steam engine with a giant electric motor. It took time before people understood that they could deploy several small motors in different parts of the factory and connect electric cables rather than having a common driveshaft. It takes time to understand the technology and its applicability.

Steam engine

The situation with unikernels is similar. We have this new thing and to some extent we’re using it to replace some general purpose operating system workloads. But we’re still very much limited by how we think about operating systems and computers.

Unikernels are radically different. Naturally the question of the killer app has come up on a number of occasions. As unikernels are quite different from the dominant operating systems of today it isn’t as easy to spot what it will be. Here I’ll try to answer why it’s hard to spot the killer app.

Defining characteristics of unikernels

Let’s start Continue reading

Cisco ASAv Vagrant Box Install

This blog covers how to install Cisco ASAv boxes for use with Vagrant. Cisco does not provide an ASAv Vagrant box on Vagrant cloud but it is possible to create a Vagrant boxes out of the ASAv VMware ova. As you will see it is a bit more involved but well worth the effort. This post assumes...

IDG Contributor Network: Is WAN Optimization Dead?

As an ever present staple of technology in the inventory of any major enterprise, WAN optimizers have begun to lose their luster. While there are still probably thousands in widespread use throughout the world, evolution has conspired to put them on the endangered species list. Do you remember thicknet, thinnet, or token ring? Yup! That kind of endangered! Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Is WAN Optimization Dead?

As an ever present staple of technology in the inventory of any major enterprise, WAN optimizers have begun to lose their luster. While there are still probably thousands in widespread use throughout the world, evolution has conspired to put them on the endangered species list. Do you remember thicknet, thinnet, or token ring? Yup! That kind of endangered! Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Is WAN Optimization Dead?

As an ever present staple of technology in the inventory of any major enterprise, WAN optimizers have begun to lose their luster. While there are still probably thousands in widespread use throughout the world, evolution has conspired to put them on the endangered species list. Do you remember thicknet, thinnet, or token ring? Yup! That kind of endangered! Continue reading

Worth Reading: Web archiving and the importance of context

One of the most basic tenants of all data science is that data doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it is the result of a massive pipeline of explicit and implicit decisions, yet so much of the output of the data science world proceeds as if data can be cleanly separated from the contexts in which it is created. Nowhere is this more apparent than the world of web archiving. —Kalev Leetaru @ Forbes

The post Worth Reading: Web archiving and the importance of context appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Announcing the ultimate BGP how-to guide

The Border Gateway Protocol has become the most popular routing protocol in the data center. But for all its popularity, some consider BGP to be too complicated. Despite its maturity and sophistication, many network operators and data center administrators won’t go anywhere near it. If only there were an equally sophisticated BGP guide to solve this problem…

Fortunately, your prayers to the data center gods have been answered. We at Cumulus are incredibly proud of our Chief Scientist, Dinesh Dutt, who has added the title of “published author” to his impressive repertoire with the publication of the ebook BGP in the Data Center. This handy BGP how-to guide, published by O’Reilly Media, is the ideal companion for anyone looking to better understand the Border Gateway Protocol and its place in the data center. It’s perfect for any network operators and engineers that want to become masters of this protocol, regardless of their base level of familiarity with BGP.

In this ebook, Dinesh covers BGP operations and enhancements to simplify its use in order to help readers truly appreciate the elegance and ultimate simplicity of BGP.

This guide covers topics such as:

Moving Forward with Path Forward

Moving Forward with Path Forward

In February, I blogged about our first rotation of Path Forward returnships and the awesome people we’ve hired as a result of the program. As a refresher, Path Forward is a nonprofit organization that aims to empower people who’ve taken time away from their careers to focus on caregiving to return to the workforce.

Cloudflare started partnering with Path Forward this past year as a way to expand our talent pool to include the best and the brightest, regardless of any gaps in their career journeys. We truly believe in a diverse group of employees, and that includes those who can bring different perspectives from their time away from the workforce.

We’ve been lucky to have three amazing candidates go through the Path Forward program this time around across our People & Places, Solutions Engineering, and Marketing teams.

Moving Forward with Path ForwardChristine Winston (director of partnerships, Path Forward), Me, and Tami Forman (executive director, Path Forward)

The Cloudflare Path Forward Experience

Gigi Chiu did a returnship with the Solutions Engineering team here at Cloudflare after taking some time off to raise her children. Before taking time off, she worked at Motorola and previously worked for a telco in Canada that was helping to Continue reading

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