Category: automation

One of the engineers going through my Ansible for Networking Engineers online course sent me this question:

In the Introduction section, you mention a use case of upgrading software. Do you have an example playbook?

Unfortunately, I don’t. Upgrading software is one of those things that’s almost impossible to simulate in a virtual lab.

Some networking practitioners start their network automation journey with the Python or Ansible dilemma. Engineers and architects usually want to understand the bigger picture first, and figure out the potential showstoppers and roadblocks. One of them left this feedback on the Network Automation 101 webinar:

A must-have overview of fundamental Network Automation concepts. I wouldn't face an automation project without understanding these concepts first.

In mid-July dr. Olivier Bonaventure (one of the unsung networking heroes who’s always trying to address real-life problems instead of inventing unicorn solutions in search of a problem) sent an email to v6ops mailing list describing how they teach networking.

Short summary for differently-attentive:

I’ve added two new case studies to Ansible for Networking Engineers online course:

Create network diagrams from LLDP information playbook focuses on creating a single summary report based on information from numerous devices (and the report just happens to be network diagram in DOT format).

I got several interesting replies to my automation and orchestration blog post. Some of them were so far in the land of alternate definitions that they were literally off the charts. Here’s one of the best I got in that category:

If you’re not old enough to know otherwise, you’d think (based on recent hype) that we discovered network automation a few years ago. Not true. One of my readers sent me a link to excellent Managing IP Networks with Free Software presentation from NANOG26 (October 2002).

I found the presentation awesome, nothing new, and extremely sad… all at the same time.

I got tons of questions about the upcoming Building Network Automation Solutions online course. It always starts with the same one:

Is access to the self-study material granted upon enrollment?

Absolutely. You also get access to everything we did in January, and the new self-paced Ansible for Networking Engineers online course.

Have you ever wondered what the difference between automation and orchestration is?

Wikipedia defines automation as use of various control systems for operating equipment. The definition I prefer (because it’s easier to understand in network automation environment) is elimination of well-defined repeatable manual tasks – the emphasis being on well-defined and repeatable.

Here’s the list of materials (and other changes) I added to the Ansible for Networking Engineers webinar and online course in June 2017.

The first thing you’ll notice is the brand-new user interface with collapsible sections, making it easier to grasp the big picture (the change was badly needed – the webinar is already almost 12 hours long).

I get a “how do I get started with network automation” question every other week, and when I wrote a lengthy reply to one about configuration templating of existing snowflake network on networktocode Slack channel I decided it’s time to turn my replies into a blog post.

I developed over a dozen different Ansible-based network automation solutions in the last two years for my network automation workshops and online course, and always published them on GitHub… but never built an index, or explained what they do, and why I decided to do things that way.

With the new my.ipSpace.net functionality I added for online courses I got the hooks I needed to make the first part happen:

Today I can tell you who the first speakers in the autumn 2017 network automation online course will be.

• Patrick Ogenstad (author of numerous open-source network automation modules and libraries) will talk about his journey to network automation, and lessons learned on the way.
• David Barroso will talk about his newest project: support of OpenConfig in NAPALM and Ansible (also discussed on a recent podcast).

Sounds promising? Why don’t you register before we run out of early-bird tickets?

If you'd come to me as a networking engineer and say “there's one new thing I want to learn that's outside of my $dayjob” I'd probably say “invest some serious time into learning Git (beyond memorizing the quick recipes) if you haven’t done that already”

Full disclosure: not so long ago I tried to avoid Git as much as possible… and then it suddenly clicked ;)

Long story short: I’m launching Ansible for Networking Engineers self-paced course today. It’s already online and you can start whenever you wish.

Now for the details…

Isn’t there already an Ansible for Networking Engineers webinar? Yes.

So what’s the difference? Glad you asked ;)

Last week I published self-study exercises for the YAML and Jinja2 modules in the Ansible for Networking Engineers webinars, and a long list of review questions for the Using Ansible and Ansible Deeper Dive sections.

I also reformatted the webinar materials page. Hope you’ll find the new format easier to read than the old one (it’s hard to squeeze over 70 videos and links on a single page ;).

Oh, and you do know you get Ansible webinar (and over 50 other webinars) with ipSpace.net subscription, right?