How Nagios is leveraging Ansible Network Automation

Learn how Nagios leverages native Ansible modules to manage network automation in Nagios XI.

It's simple -- Nagios delegates a whole ton of stuff to Ansible in terms of network automation, so that we can focus on what we do best, which is monitoring. That's why I am super excited about Ansible’s Network Automation abilities – it means we don’t have to write a whole ton of code in order to offer our customers an extension of what our products can do. See a demo how Ansible network automation has been incorporated into our business.

Presented by... Aaron Cieslicki, who helps administrators and organizations monitor IT environments through tutorial videos, webinars, live chat, and email. Since Nagios products can monitor nearly anything that runs on electricity, he cultivates broad knowledge on myriad topics, including operating systems, networking, storage, applications, databases, websites, APIs, and protocols.

Transcript

1. Tonight’s presentation: How Nagios is leveraging Ansible Network Automation OR ….
2. Tonight’s presentation: How AnsibleFest showed me how completely, entirelty wrong my thinking was when I first scheduled this talk.
3. Do you know who I am?! Aaron Cieslicki Lead Integrations Specialist ac@nagios.com LinkedIn: Aaron Cieslicki
4. Hoped-for take-aways for y’all • Ansible for Network Automation exists • How the cool kids are doing it • A little about Nagios
5. The problem: AnsibleFest
6. Nagios does monitoring
7. How it works
8. The initial Nagios Ansible use case Deployment Automation
9. Ansible Pros / Cons • Pros • Open source, linux-based, fast, workable, already in use with some of our clients • Cons • Need to teach it to some of our clients, Windows automation seems difficult
10. Challenges and Results • Challenges • Writing for others instead of writing for ourselves internally • Supporting all possible client configurations • Results • Strong anecdotal evidence for success, good video views
11. Next steps on this first automation • Windows support • Writing playbooks with Tower in mind • Nagios Log Server integration
12. And now … network automation • Did you know Ansible can run automation on networking devices? • https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/list_of_network_modules.htm l
13. Why would Nagios care? • Our customers and prospects routinely ask us for configuration management for network devices
14. My AWESOME!!! idea • Ansible automates a backup, Nagios monitors that the backup file exists, and is fresh. • We just bundle in Ansible, and save ourselves tons of developer $$$$
15. And then … AnsibleFest • … where I learned how the cool kids are doing configuration management
16. So now what for my big idea? • The new big idea: • Inventory script / plugin – Nagios as the source of inventory truth
17. Other cool things I could do • Configure network devices for log and NetFlow data export to Nagios Log Server and Network Analyzer
18. Questions / ideas / feedback ?