Chapter 4 Where to Start with Network Automation?

o Established patterns for buildings / floors on the campus access. o Summarized IP address spaces. o Meaningful IP addresses. o Some standards for point-to-point links, routes and routing tables.  Naming conventions.  Standardized servers for NTP, DHCP, DNS, syslog and SNMP.  IOS versions.  QoS models.  Standard port configurations:

o SVIs. o Physical ports. o Port-channels. o Access ports. o Trunk ports.  Access port standards:

o Data and voice VLANs. o STP toolkit. o QoS. o 802.1x. o Port description. o PoE.  Trunk port standards:

o Native VLAN. o VLAN list. o Port description. Ironically, the first automated task may be using Ansible to perform the network reconnaissance to prepare the network for Ansible.

At this point, confirm that all the architectural components are in place and are able to communicate with each other. If not, work with the network operations team or server administrators to help finalize the environment. A final checklist:  Microsoft TFS Server:

o Configured and licensed. o RBAC in place. o Repository created for environment. o Link to repository published. o Able to communicate with VS Code / Git on developers' workstations. o Able to communicate with Linux / Git on host running Ansible (if not same host as VS Code

development host). o Certificates and PKI.

 Linux host:

o Can reach network devices through SSH. o Can reach TFS via 8080 / 8443. o Ansible installed. o Repository cloned locally from TFS.