Data is the foundation for scalable, reliable infrastructure automation, but many organizations struggle with inventory management and data configuration as they work to fully automate their infrastructure lifecycle. On May 21st, 2025, Nick Thompson presented a session at Red Hat Summit in Boston, MA, in which he introduced NetBox, a solution for modeling and documenting modern networks as a single source of truth for network automation, built on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. In this session, they explored this data-centric automation approach with live demonstrations of automating: * Device and data onboarding into the NetBox platform using Ansible Automation Platform. * Day 0 network provisioning. * Day 2 operations and configuration compliance. * Testing and validation This event provides access to the companion lab presented during the session so that attendees can get hands-on experience with the technologies and integrations demonstrated during the talk.

Join us for the Virtual Lab Workshop, where we'll introduce the Infrastructure Source of Truth Learning Series. This series is designed for infrastructure engineers to learn how to manage data for automation effectively. You'll explore the concept of a "Source of Truth" (SoT) and key considerations for building one. The session covers two SoT solutions: Text File-based SoT and NetBox as a SoT. In the Text File module, you'll learn how to manage and use text files in automation. The NetBox module will teach you how to interface with NetBox for managing variable data and inventory. The workshop includes hands-on labs with guided challenges to reinforce these concepts, providing practical experience with both file-based and NetBox SoT solutions.