A common problem in automation environments is that the data driving automation is not actually authoritative. Many teams still rely on spreadsheets, static inventory files, or manually maintained host lists. Over time that data drifts and automation becomes unreliable.
I recently put together a small demo showing how Nautobot can be used as a source of truth for Ansible Automation Platform so that automation is driven by infrastructure data instead of manually maintained inventory.
The demo walks through a few pieces:
- What a “source of truth” means in the context of infrastructure automation
- How Nautobot models devices, interfaces, and relationships
- Using Nautobot as a dynamic inventory for Ansible Automation Platform
- Triggering automation workflows using event-driven automation when data changes
Instead of manually updating inventories, the automation platform pulls data from Nautobot and executes workflows based on that authoritative model of the infrastructure.
Video walkthrough:
If anyone wants to look at the demo environment itself, the code and examples used in the video are available here:
Curious to hear how others are handling source-of-truth data for automation today. Are you using something like Nautobot/NetBox, building your own system, or still relying on static inventories?