The ramblings of a computer geek
A common issue when using the Ansible “user” module is setting a password. Although you shouldn’t be writing the password direct into your Ansible YML files, unless this is for testing, or you intend to replace them with something to store them securely and retrieve them at runtime, for example Ansible Vault; you need to … Read more
To see a list of listening ports on a host you can run: You can also filter with the below, in this example filtering to port 22 (SSH):
When building playbooks and tasks, you may find you want to check the status of a host before you attempt to perform a particular action upon it. You wouldn’t want it to attempt to perform an action which would fail because something is missing, you’d want it to check first. Although you can use conditionals … Read more
An Arista Network uses two main approaches for the routing and switching of traffic across the network; there are others, but these are the main ones to consider. Raw Routing (using BGP) with Virtual Router and MLAG Leaf Example Pattern The example given here is a simple example pattern of what a Raw Routing – … Read more
Netcat (nc) is a simple, but very useful tool to perform connection tests and scans on your network. Its helpful to quickly check if a port is open (and listening) on a remote machine and that firewall change you made is working as expected. Here i’ll provide some simple examples for you to try. Check … Read more
We’re using Containerd for to run the containers within our Kubernetes environment. But if we want to quickly spin up some containers for testing, or more likely create our own container images, we can use Docker. Before we can start to create our own container images, we need to install Docker and then register it … Read more
The MLAG (Multi Link Aggregation Group) allows two or more links to be bonded together to form a single virtual link, even when that is spread across two Leaf Switches. Fundamentally the approach for this is exactly the same as is the case with Extreme Networks, Cisco etc. only the syntax is slightly different. Its … Read more
SCP (Secure Copy Protocol) is a useful command to copy files between systems, we’ll explore a few example scenarios that you’ll commonly use. I’m not going into great detail about all the various arguments and options you can use, these you can find in other articles elsewhere. Instead this is going to be a very … Read more
If you wish to use plug-in solar within the UK, once installed you need to notify to your DNO (Distribution Network Operator), this will vary depending on where you are within the UK. The documentation here was correct at the time of writing, I urge you to check the current status and not rely fully … Read more
Ansible Vault encrypts secret variables or entire YAML files inside the repository. To unlock (see) these at the point of running the Ansible Playbook you need the Vault Password to unlock them. We’re going to create a simple example to illustate how it can be used. Ensure you have added the SSH Key to your … Read more