This chapter covers
- Configuration management and its challenges
- Template-based configuration
- Automating configuration management with Ansible and Terraform
Configuring devices in the CLI is something many network engineers grow to love, but it simply doesn’t scale well. As networks grow in size and complexity, the manual, one-by-one configuration of devices makes managing each individual device’s configuration infeasible. Not only is configuring each device time-consuming and prone to human error, but tracking configuration changes and enforcing standards across numerous devices becomes unmanageable. Many modern networks require more efficient solutions.
In this chapter, we’ll cover CCNA exam topic 6.6: Recognize the capabilities of configuration management mechanisms such as Ansible and Terraform. These tools, which embody the principles of infrastructure as code (IaC), play a crucial role in automating and standardizing device configurations, ensuring accuracy and consistency. Automating configuration management tasks is essential in many modern networks, which are increasingly large and complex. We’ll begin by examining configuration management and its difficulties and then consider how automation tools like Ansible and Terraform help to solve those problems, streamlining and enhancing the process of configuration management.