Bassem Aly - Hands-On Enterprise Automation with Python

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First published: June 2018

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ISBN 978-1-78899-851-2

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Contributors

About the author

Bassem Aly is an experienced SDN/NFV solution consultant at Juniper Networks and has been working in the telco industry for the last 9 years. He has focused on designing and implementing next-generation solutions by leveraging different automation and DevOps frameworks. Also, he has extensive experience of architecting and deploying telco applications over OpenStack. He also conducts corporate training on network automation and network programmability using Python and Ansible.

I would like to thank my amazing wife, Sarah, and my fantastic daughter, Mariam. They've sacrificed many nights and meals for this dream. I hope Mariam will read this book one day and understand why I spent so much time on the computer instead of chasing. Thanks to my parents for their encouragement, which made me who I am today. Finally, thanks to my mentor, Ashraf Albasti, who has helped me in countless ways in my career.

About the reviewer

JereJulian is a senior network automation engineer with nearly two decades of automation experience currently focused on workflow simplification through automation. The past few years have found him on the speaker circuit at DevOps Days and Interop ITX, as well as regularly contributing to network computing. He lives in NC with his wife and two boys and fights fire as a community volunteer as opposed to the data center. He can be contacted on Twitter at @julianje.

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Preface

The book starts by covering the set up of a Python environment to perform automation tasks, as well as the modules, libraries, and tools you will be using.
We'll explore examples of network automation tasks using simple Python programs and Ansible. Next, we will walk you through automating administration tasks with Python Fabric, where you will learn to perform server configuration and administration along with system administration tasks such as user management, database management, and process management. As you progress through this book, you'll automate several testing services with Python scripts and perform automation tasks on virtual machines and the cloud infrastructure with Python. In the concluding chapters, you will cover Python-based offensive security tools and learn to automate your security tasks.
By the end of this book, you will have mastered the skills of automating several system administration tasks with Python.

You can visit the author's blog at the following link: https://basimaly.wordpress.com/.

Who this book is for

Hands-On Enterprise Automationwith Python is for system administrators and DevOps engineers who are looking for an alternative to major automation frameworks such as Puppet and Chef. Basic programming knowledge with Python and Linux shell scripting is necessary.

What this book covers

, Setting Up Python Environment, explores how to download and install the Python interpreter along with the Python Integrated Development Environment, called JetBrains PyCharm. The IDE provides you with smart autocompletion, intelligent code analysis, powerful refactoring and integrates with Git, virtualenv, Vagrant, and Docker. This will help you to write professional and robust Python code.

, Common Libraries Used in Automation, covers the Python libraries that are available today and that are used for automation. We will categorize them based on their usage (system, network, and cloud) and provide a simple introduction. As you progress through the book, you will find yourself deep diving into each of them and understanding their usage.