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If I’m honest, I feel like Jinja gets a bad rap. Its role is often thought to be only for generating network configurations. And with model-driven automation being on the rise it can feel like Jinja is a legacy, tainted tool that we should be moving away from. I’

Overview Hi all, welcome back to another blog post on Ansible. I hope most of you are familiar with spine and leaf architecture, where each leaf switch connects to every spine switch to create a non-blocking, scalable fabric. In this example, we will have two spine switches and six leaf

When writing code, clarity and maintainability are everything. One of the most powerful design principles you can apply to achieve this is CQS - Command Query Separation. What is CQS? CQS (Command Query Separation) means: A function should either do something (a Command) or answer something (a Query) - never

Overview When working with Ansible, you often deal with structured data made up of nested dictionaries and lists. This could be anything from device configurations to network status or inventory data. Accessing the specific piece of data you need can get messy, especially when the structure is deep or repetitive.

In the world of Python development, there are a ton of tools out there. But there are three that I believe should be part of every modern developer’s toolbox: Uv, Ruff, and Taskfile. Uv – Fast Python Package Manager Uv is a modern, drop-in replacement for pip, venv, and pip-tools.

Introduction Recently someone asked: Is there a way to fetch CVE (vulnerability) data for platforms like Cisco, Palo Alto, and Fortinet in a programmatic way, so we can integrate it into a solution we’re building? The short answer: yes—and one of the best ways to do this is

Overview Not all of us Network Engineers have a dedicated network configuration backup tool for various reasons. Paid solutions like Orion are excellent but come with a high cost. There are solid open-source alternatives like Rancid or Oxidized, but setting them up can be a bit complex. Or maybe you

Overview As network engineers, we are very much used to making configuration changes via the CLI, something we've relied on since the start of our networking careers. However, in the past few years, there has been a push towards network automation, with tools like Ansible and Python becoming

Introduction One key component of Ansible is its inventory. Ansible’s inventory lets you organise and define the targets you will automate. Whether you're automating a small network or a large-scale deployment, a solid inventory setup—and knowing how to work with it—makes all the difference. In