Gain insights into automating network reconnaissance, orchestrating repetitive changes, and transforming network configuration management. Discover CI/CD pipeline migration for full network automation.

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​​Network automation begins with automating network reconnaissance. This is accomplished by gathering important information from network devices while building a library of dynamic on-demand utilities and generating living documentation. Starting small, the course exhibits the simplicity and elegance of network automation.

Next, you will learn how to automate larger changes that require a high number of repetitive steps. These changes will be executed serially in a specific orchestrated order, making them perfect for an automated solution. After gaining comfort with the new tools, you can fully transform network configuration management to an automated, intent-based, self-documenting system.

The final step is learning how to migrate to a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, thereby fully automating the network.

Automate Your Network

# Tactical changes
Making one-time, tactical configuration changes is a great place to move from automating network reconnaissance to automating changes to the network. A one-time change to the network or a tactical configuration change is throw-away work that will be done once. These are often tedious jobs when performed manually at scale. Oversights in design may be found in production, leading to required corrections. Perhaps legacy code has become outdated and needs to be replaced. Maybe standards or conventions were not followed, leading to a non-golden configuration. Net-new requirements, for example, of a new Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server, frequently arise during day-to-day operations. Every organization is different, and each network has unique requirements and challenges. 

Here are some opportunities for tactical, one-time changes that can be automated:

## Application of standards or conventions
   This can be a standard Network Time Protocol (NTP) server for all network devices to ensure the native VLAN is set correctly on all trunk ports.  

## Correcting errors
   Opportunities for tactical, one-time changes arise if there are known problems on the network that have been put off. This is usually because of the scale of the change, or the lack of priorities, tedium, resources and an understanding of the amount of manual effort required. Often, it’s simply due to waiting for an automated solution to arrive.  

## Net-new projects
   Draw a line in the sand and try to commit to automating all net-new project requirements that entail changes to the network. 

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We have a place for one-time tactical Ansible playbooks as part of the repository. These playbooks will become part of the larger network automation framework, and are available for cloning and repurposing. Examples of successful plays help others develop their own playbooks and code.

Let's take a look at some of the opportunities for making changes to the network configuration.

Introduction

What Is Network Automation?

Why Automate the Network?

How to Automate the Network

Where to Start with Network Automation

Repository Structure

Network Reconnaissance

Tactical Playbooks

Data Models and Dynamic Templates

Dynamic Intent-Based Documentation

Configuration Management

Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery

Conclusion

Configuration Changes

Tactical changes