Key Features and Integrations

Key Features

Automation Gateway is a robust, standalone application that runs as its own REST-ful process. It has many different feature sets, or integrations, which can be used to manage a wide range of devices.

Automation Gateway

As a network automation solution, Automation Gateway:

• Enables connectivity and interactivity with an extremely wide range of devices.
• Leverages multiple libraries and execution styles from pure Python to Ansible Runner to shell scripting.
• Returns discovered elements as JSON-Schema models which can be enhanced to handle user inputs.
• Secures access via presentation of user/password credentials.
• Natively supports the HTTP protocol and HTTPS via proxy for client/server communication.
• Supports multiple inventory systems (Ansible, Nornir, etc) and sources (internal or external) for managing devices.
• Provides a stateless server and has no requirements on redundancy roles.

Automation Gateway integrates with the automation tools listed below. Functional attributes regarding each automation tool are provided.

Ansible

• Discover and execute the network family of Ansible modules.
• Discover and execute Ansible certified roles.
• Discover and execute any Ansible playbooks.
• Discover and execute any Ansible Collections.
• Install Ansible Galaxy Collections.
• Enable intelligent Ansible module/role/playbook decorations to specify and validate the required input parameters.
• Access and update Ansible hosts (inventory).

Nornir

• Discover and execute user provided Nornir modules.
• Enable intelligent Nornir module decorations to specify and validate the required input parameters.
• Access Nornir configuration and hosts (inventory).

Netmiko

• Establish connections with a wide range of Netmiko-supported devices.
• Execute the send_command function to gather data from devices.
• Execute the send_config_set function to configure devices.

Terraform

• Discover and execute user provided Terraform modules.
• Enable intelligent Terraform module decorations to specify and validate the required input parameters.
• Execute Terraform actions such as Initialize, Plan, Apply, Destroy, Validate.

Custom Scripts

• Discover and execute user provided scripts in the user defined scripting environment (shell, Python, etc).
• Enable intelligent script decorations to specify and validate the required input parameters.

Ansible Primer

While certainly full featured, the architecture, terms, and concepts associated with Ansible are relatively common in the Python network automation space.