Category: Automation

In March I explained why it’s unrealistic to expect to use machine learning to solve unknown problems in today’s snowflake networks… but are there other problems that could be solved?

Here’s an idea Paul Greenberg pointed me to: machine learning on public DNS data. Let’s see whether it might make sense:

If you’re like me, you’re probably sick-and-tired of Python versions, environments… Every time I update Python on my MacBook Pro with Homebrew, I lose all packages I installed for the previous version of Python (because I’m installing them system-wide and they’re stored in version-specific directory).

Jon Langemak found a potential solution to this problem: PyEnv. My first reaction was: Great, just what I need… but as he described how it really works, I realized that it’s always possible to add another layer of indirection. RFC1925 strikes again.

Brett Lykins published an excellent description of what an automation Minimum Viable Product could be.

Not surprisingly, he’s almost perfectly in sync with what we’ve been telling networking engineers in ipSpace.net Network Automation online course:

• Start small
• Go for quick wins
• Do read-only stuff before modifying device configurations
• Test, test, test…

This blog post was initially sent to the subscribers of my SDN and Network Automation mailing list. Subscribe here.

Adam left a thoughtful comment addressing numerous interesting aspects of network design in the era of booming automation hype on my How Should Network Architects Deal with Network Automation blog post. He started with:

A question I keep tasking myself with addressing but never finding the best answer, is how appropriate is it to reform a network environment into a flattened design such as spine-and-leaf, if that reform is with the sole intent and purpose to enable automation?

A few basic facts first:

Daniel Teycheney published an excellent blog post with numerous hints on starting your automation journey including:

• Which programming language should you start with?
• Python or Ansible?
• What about Terraform?
• What resources could you use?

This blog post was initially sent to the subscribers of my SDN and Network Automation mailing list. Subscribe here.

In late 2018 Juniper started aggressively promoting Network Reliability Engineering - the networking variant of concepts of software-driven operations derived from GIFEE SRE concept (because it must make perfect sense to mimic whatever Google is doing, right?).

There’s nothing wrong with promoting network automation, or infrastructure-as-code concepts, and Matt Oswalt and his team did an awesome job with NRE Labs (now defunct, huge “Thank you!” to whoever was financing them), but is that really all NRE should be?

A network architect friend of mine sent me a series of questions trying to figure out how he should approach network automation, and how deep he should go.

There is so much focus right now on network automation, but it’s difficult for me to know how to apply it, and how it all makes sense from an Architect’s PoV.

A network architect should be the bridge between the customer requirements and the underlying technologies, which (in my opinion) means he has to have a good grasp of both as opposed to fluffy opinions glanced from vendor white papers, or brushed off so-called thought leaders.

One of the attendees in our Building Network Automation Solutions online course sent me this question:

While building an automation tool using Python for CLI provisioning, is it a good idea to use SDK provided by device vendor, or use simple SSH libraries Netmiko/Paramiko and build all features (like rollback-on-failure, or error handling, or bulk provisioning) yourself.

The golden rule of software development should be “don’t reinvent the wheel”… but then maybe you need tracks to navigate in the mud and all you can get are racing slicks, and it might not make sense to try to force-fit them into your use case, so we’re back to “it depends”.

Loved the article from Philip Laplante about environmental antipatterns. I’ve seen plenty of founderitis and shoeless children in my life, but it was worshipping the golden calf that made me LOL:

In any environment where there is poor vision or leadership, it is often convenient to lay one’s hopes on a technology or a methodology about which little is known, thereby providing a hope for some miracle. Since no one really understands the technology, methodology, or practice, it is difficult to dismiss. This is an environmental antipattern because it is based on a collective suspension of disbelief and greed, which couldn’t be sustained by one or a few individuals embracing the ridiculous.

Helping a friend of mine figure out the details of using Salt in Zero-Touch-Provisioning environments, Zach Moody sent me a description of their process, and was kind enough to allow me to turn it into a blog post.

We follow the same basic ZTP process you would with anything else. Salt drives the parts that interface with the network devices with information from our source-of-truth, NetBox.