A heterogeneous network of vendors and device types needs automating for better efficiency and to enable future automated testing. The network consists of switches, routers, firewalls and load…

Ansible can use NETCONF modules but does not provide native configuration diff and rollback at the network-device level without significant custom development.

Combining Ansible and Terraform adds infrastructure provisioning capability but still does not provide native NETCONF rollback or multi-vendor YANG orchestration.

Cisco NSO (Network Services Orchestrator) is specifically designed for multi-vendor network automation using NETCONF/RESTCONF and YANG models as its native southbound interface. It provides built-in configuration diff and rollback from initial deployment, satisfying the buy-versus-build requirement without custom engineering effort. Ansible and Terraform lack native, production-grade NETCONF rollback and multi-vendor YANG orchestration out of the box.

Terraform is an infrastructure provisioning tool focused on declarative state management for cloud resources, not NETCONF/YANG-based network device configuration.

Adding Ansible to NSO is unnecessary overhead; NSO alone covers all stated requirements including diff, rollback, and multi-vendor YANG support.