Running BSD in containerlab
A few months ago I started tinkering with OpenBSD and wrote a post about it. Now, I'd like to share how to easily run not only OpenBSD but also FreeBSD nodes in a lab environment with IaC approach.
Tutorial
Automating Python project releases with commitizen
In my previous post, I mentioned various tools meant to help implement code management best practices, but I didn't go into much detail about any of them. This time I'd like to focus on Commitizen which introduced me to the concept of conventional commit messages and automatic versioning.
Building a Template for a Network Automation Project
Using templates for device configurations is a common practice and it has obvious benefits, such as speed and consistency. Working on many small Python automation projects made me think of employing the same approach. Previously I had to copy and adjust a lot of code-related things such as directory structure, poetry settings, CI/CD pipelines, etc. Templating all of this allowed me to reduce the initial scaffolding overhead to a minimum and jump straight into writing code. In this article, I want to share my experience in building such a template.
How to Run a Python CLI Tool Inside a Docker Container
Have you ever faced a problem sharing your python scripts with the rest of your team? You need to ensure a lot of things for your script to run on a recipient's machine. This often involves ensuring that the Python interpreter's correct version and all the dependencies are installed among other things. To put it mildly, portability is not Python's strong suit. That's where Docker can come in handy.
Using Cisco Support API with Postman
In this post, I would like to make a quick introduction on how to make use of Cisco Support APIs. Cisco has several Data APIs which allow their partners and customers to consume a lot of different information about their products and services programmatically. Here is the list of all available Data APIs:
How to Automate OpenVPN Server Deployment and User Management
Recently I’ve been tasked to come up with a VPN solution which must support: - All major desktop and mobile OSes as clients - Clients behind NAT - Mikrotik RouterOS as a client - Site-to-site and remote access VPNs
First, I had to decide whether it will be a dedicated hardware appliance or software running on a VM. The latter was more appealing because of its flexibility and ease of deployment.
Second, I needed to choose the actual software. The following options were considered: - IPSEC implementations such as FreeSWAN, OpenSWAN or strongSWAN - OpenVPN - SoftEther
OpenVPN was chosen because of its huge user base, cross-platform client support, and extensive customization options.
Automate Windows VM Creation and Configuration in vSphere Using Packer, Terraform and Ansible (Part 3 of 3)
This is the final entry in the series. In this post, I want to show how Ansible can be used to automate Windows VM provisioning. As always all the scripts and configurations are available at my GitHub repository.
Automate Windows VM Creation and Configuration in vSphere Using Packer, Terraform and Ansible (Part 2 of 3)
In the first entry of this series I showed how to create VM templates using Packer. Now we can use those templates to spin up actual VMs with help of Terraform.
Automate Windows VM Creation and Configuration in vSphere Using Packer, Terraform and Ansible (Part 1 of 3)
In this series of posts I'd like to show how to automate the process of setting up virtual infrastructure consisting of several Windows Server 2016 machines. Most articles I've come across cover the use of cloud providers (e.g. AWS) as a virtualization platform, so I decided to make a write up about my experience with VMware vSphere.