Category: data models

One of my readers sent me this question:

How can I learn more about reading REST API information from network devices and storing the data into tables?

Long story short: it’s like learning how to drive (well) - you have to master multiple seemingly-unrelated tasks to get the job done.

We got pretty far in our data deduplication in network data model journey, from initial attempts to network modeled as a graph… but we still haven’t got rid of all the duplicate information.

For example, if we have multiple devices connected to the same subnet, why should we have to specify IP address and subnet mask for every device (literally begging the operators to make input errors). Wouldn’t it be better (assuming we don’t care about exact IP addresses on core links) to assign IP addresses automatically?

Remember the avoid duplicate data in network automation data models challenge and the restructuring we did to represent a network as a graph.

Well, I was not happy with the end result - I hated the complexity of supporting Jinja2 templates that had to check left- and right nodes of a link, so I generalized the data structure a bit, and all of a sudden I could model stub interfaces, P2P links and multi-access networks.

Last week I explained how you could take a typical first attempt at a network automation data model and reduce the amount of duplicate data… but the data model we used was still describing a set of seemingly disconnected boxes.

How about restructuring the whole thing and describing what networks really are - graphs made of nodes (network devices) and links?

One of the toughest challenges in the hands-on part of Building Network Automation Solutions online course is the create a data model describing your service exercise.

Networking engineers never had to think about data models describing their networks or services, and the first attempt often results in something that looks like simplified device configuration in YAML or JSON format.

I wrote a long article describing how you can slowly redesign your box-focused data model into a network-focused one. The first parts describing the problem and initial deduplication are already online.

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

One of the toughest tasks faced by networking engineers attending our Building Network Automation Solutions course is designing a data model describing network infrastructure or services. They usually think in terms of individual devices (nodes) resulting in tons of duplicated data.

I always point that out when reviewing their solutions and suggest how to minimize or eliminate duplicate data. Not surprisingly, doing that is hard, and one of the attendees started wondering whether the extra effort makes sense:

Remember the previous blog post in this sequence in which I explained the need for single source-of-truth used in your network automation solution? No? Please read it first ;)

Ready for the next step? Assuming your sole source-of-truth is the actual device configuration, is there a magic mechanism we can use to transform it into something we could use in network automation?

TL&DR: No.

In the first blog post of this series I described how you could start building the prerequisite for any network automation solution: the device inventory.

Having done that, you should know what is in your network, but you still don’t know how your network is supposed to work and what services it is supposed to provide. Welcome to the morass known as building your source-of-truth.