Where to start with network automation from ravitejafe's blog

In dynamic networks change is constant. Services can be developed, validated, tested and deployed at a fraction of the cost and time using virtualized infrastructure, virtual network functions (VNFs) and cloud native functions (CNFs).

This process is known as continuous integration, continuous testing and continuous deployment (CI-CT-CD). Service deployment becomes on-demand. Network and service monitoring is automated, and networks become largely “self-healing”. Most importantly, services can be amended or retired rapidly streamlining the commercial product and service catalog.

There are three phases in the network automation lifecycle:

Design

Deploy

Operate

There’s a phrase going around in our business: “To err is human; to propagate errors massively at scale is automation.”

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Automation is a great way for any organization to speed up bad practices and #fail bigger. Unfortunately, when your business is network ops, the desire to be a cool “Ops” kid with some “Dev” chops — as opposed to just a CLI jockey — will quickly lead you down the automation road. That road might not lead you to those aspirational goals, although it certainly could expand your blast radius for failures.

Before we further contemplate self-driving, intent-driven networking, and every other phrase that’s all the rage today (although I’m just as guilty of such contemplation as anyone else at Juniper), we should take the time to define what we mean by “proper” in the phrase, “building an automated network properly.”

If you haven’t guessed already, it’s not about writing Python scripts. Programming is all well and good, but twenty minutes of design often really does save about two weeks of coding. To start hacking at a problem right away is probably the wrong approach. You need to step back from our goals, think about what gives them meaning, apply those goals to the broader picture, and plan accordingly.

Virtualization and especially containers have made the concept of baking images very accessible, and immutable infrastructure popular. While there is still much work to do with network software disaggregation, containerization, and decoupling of services, there are many benefits of adopting immutable infrastructure that are equally applicable to networking. Today’s network devices are poster children for config drift, but to call them “snowflakes” would be an insult to actual snowflakes.

More info: network technician