Python packages for DevOps engineer

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As a DevOps Engineer, you have to deal with a lot of different tools and technologies every day. One of the most popular and powerful tools in your toolkit is Python.

In this article, we will discuss some Python packages that are commonly used by DevOps engineers along with code examples.

Ansible

Ansible is a popular open-source tool for configuration management, application deployment, and task automation. It uses a simple syntax called “playbooks” to define tasks and workflows, which makes it easy to learn and use. Ansible can manage thousands of servers at once, and it can integrate with other tools like Docker and Kubernetes.

Here’s an example playbook that installs the Apache web server on a remote server:

---
- hosts: webservers
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Install Apache web server
      apt:
        name: apache2
        state: present

Boto3

Boto3 is a Python library that provides easy access to Amazon Web Services (AWS) APIs. It allows DevOps engineers to automate tasks such as creating and managing EC2 instances, S3 buckets, and RDS databases.

Here’s an example of how Boto3 can be used to create an EC2 instance

import boto3

ec2 = boto3.client('ec2')
response = ec2.run_instances(ImageId='ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0', MinCount=1, MaxCount=1)
instance_id = response['Instances'][0]['InstanceId']
print(f"Instance ID: {instance_id}")

PyYAML

PyYAML is a Python library that enables the parsing and serialization of YAML files. It is commonly used in DevOps for configuration management and data serialization.

Here’s an example of how PyYAML can be used to read a YAML file:

import yaml

with open('config.yaml', 'r') as f:
    config = yaml.load(f, Loader=yaml.FullLoader)
print(config)

Fabric

Fabric is a Python library for executing remote shell commands over SSH. It simplifies the process of managing remote servers by providing a high-level API for executing common tasks such as deploying code, managing files, and running system commands.

Here’s an example of using Fabric to deploy code to a remote server:

from fabric import Connection

def deploy():
    c = Connection(host='example.com', user='deploy')
    c.run('cd /path/to/app && git pull')
    c.run('sudo systemctl restart app')

Psutil

Psutil is a Python library for retrieving system information. It provides an easy-to-use API for accessing information about processes, system utilization, disk usage, and more.

Here’s an example of using Psutil to retrieve CPU usage information:

import psutil

# Get CPU usage
cpu_percent = psutil.cpu_percent()
print(f'CPU usage: {cpu_percent}%')

# Get Memory usage
print(psutil.virtual_memory())

# Get Disk usage
print(psutil.disk_usage('/'))

Paramiko

Paramiko is a Python implementation of the SSH protocol that allows secure connections between two hosts. It provides an interface for handling the SSH connection, file transfer, and terminal emulation.

import paramiko

ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
ssh.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())
ssh.connect('hostname', username='username', password='password')

stdin, stdout, stderr = ssh.exec_command('ls -l')
print(stdout.read())

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