OS Software Sections

[Orionesque]

I'm learning Ansible to setup network equipment. In the documentation it's mentioned that network equipment software is broken up into sections or resources as Ansible calls them. Why is the OS software broken up into sections e.g. VLAN, OSPF, ACLs etc.?

[M02@rt37]

Hello @Orionesque

...because each feature is a separate functional subsystem that manage its own part of the device state. Ansible calls these sections resources so it can manage them independently as structured data instead of "raw" cli text...

This makes automation idempotent and easier to compare with the current configuration, safer to modify specific features without affecting others, and more portable across vendors because ansible works with network concepts (VLANs...) rather than vendor-specific cli syntax...

[Orionesque]

Were things the same when IOS was around? It sounds like IOS XE is a modular thing on top of Linux. So in that latter case it makes sense to have sections.

[M02@rt37 · Accepted solution]

@Orionesque 

Yes, but IOS xe keep the same configuration structure for compatibility and usability, which is why automation tools like ansible map configurations to "resources" such as vlan, ospf and acl.