Ansible 2.2 Network Updates
The Slack channel question seemed so innocuous at the time, “I was reviewing through the Ansible 2.2 commits related to networking. Is there a summary of the networking items that are new in 2.2?”
In a rather quick response, my first answer seemed so obvious, “Not really, mostly simplifying code, merging template with config modules and some new platforms."
As the conversation continued though, reality came crashing down with the realization that the sprint from Ansible 2.1 to Ansible 2.2 for networking modules was substantially more than a few tweaks and added platforms.
Before getting into what’s new and what’s changed, let's review the overall state of network integration with Ansible. We started this journey just about a year ago announcing that Ansible would start supporting direct integration with network devices. At the time, this was a fairly big departure from the more traditional roots where Ansible has focused on in the systems and application development worlds. There always seemed to be a natural fit between Ansible’s agentless, SSH-based architecture’s ability to adapt to automating traditional network device configurations. It didn’t take long for the initial integration of network modules to start achieving greater adoption.
In just three releases (counting Continue reading
Legacy apps and security are two of the big-ticket items.