By now, you may get the feeling that network management in Ansible is largely dependent on finding the right module for your task. There is certainly a lot of truth in that logic. Modules provide a way to abstract the interaction between the managed host and the control machine; they allow us to focus on the logic of our operations. Up to this point, we have seen the major vendors providing a wide range of modules for Cisco, Juniper, and Arista.

Use the Cisco Nexus modules as an example, besides specific tasks such as managing the BGP neighbor (nxos_bgp) and the aaa server (nxos_aaa_server). Most vendors also provide ways to run arbitrary show (nxos_config) and configuration commands (nxos_config). This generally covers most of our use cases.

What...