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

ansibleFinal1.tar.gz

gitjob

CIPhosts

CIPhosts-copy

gather_info

gather_important_facts

facts_to_md

facts_to_csv_html

tools

frr01

frr02

first_gather_important_facts

​​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

# Introduction

Now that the network has been converted to code, the data models can be used to create dynamic, automated documentation. 

All the intent-based variables in the data models can be manipulated to create
documentation files for each network device on the network. An Ansible playbook is created to build
automated documentation based on intent and data models: `documentation.yml`. Network documentation
is automated as part of the configuration management phase. 

The output includes:

- Dynamically generated intent-based configuration per device:
    - Representative of the running-configuration on the device
    - Offline version used for comparison against online running-configuration (coverage, syntax)
    - Updated as data models or logic changes

- Dynamically generated Markdown files:
    - Display data in a different format
    - Automated tabular view of custom user-written format that is dynamically updated
    - `.MD` file format

# Markdown format

As part of the enterprise network automation, generate dynamic documentation in the Markdown format.

These templates are easy to write, as they reuse much of the template code that has already been written. These
Markdown files can present full running-configurations or individual components. For example VLANs,
VRFs, routes, port-channels, or physical interface configurations. These automatically generated
documents scale with the network.

## What is the Markdown format? 
Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool that allows for a friendly, easy-to-read, and easy-to-write
format. Output is also very web-friendly and well-presented in browsers. By using much of the same
logic, commands, and syntax, a lot of the template code exists to create these documentation templates in
Jinja2.

## Examples of dynamic documentation


This template generates a dynamic Markdown file displaying the variable information in tabular format. In this example, all VLANs followed by the full generated configuration of the device are displayed. Every variable in the data model is available to be manipulated into human-readable
documentation files. 

Below, we can see the template and what it will look like when rendered in Markdown. All variables in `{{ }}` will have values depending on the particular host.


Get introduced to dynamic documentation and the markdown format.

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

Dynamic Documentation and the Markdown Format

Introduction