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

# Information collection and version control
At this point, the organization should be comfortable using network automation for information collection and making changes to the network. While these are both great capabilities for changing network operations, the real power of network automation lies in full configuration management coverage. In this, each device is configured by the network automation engine through dynamic templates powered by abstracted data models. Essentially, this converts the network configurations to code. 

This code comprises intent-driven data models in human-readable format. These models are composed of variables and dynamic templates that contain the configurations. Version control can now be implemented using Git. The compiled configurations are then pushed to the network through automated Ansible playbooks.

# CI/CD pipeline
Creating a CI/CD pipeline is the last step towards fully automating the network. Automated builds, tests, and releases are now available to network operators. As part of the branching strategy, builds are triggered automatically whenever pull requests merge code into the master branch (CI). Releases can be scheduled and deployed to the network much like a patch to software is released to applications. Scheduled releases can occur at any frequency, be it – hourly, nightly, weekly, or monthly. Approved changes are then merged into the master branch in the repository, This automatically triggers the deployment during the next scheduled release (CD). This is how the full power of network automation is unleashed.  


Let's look at some of the final steps in the automation process.

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

Some Final Steps

Information collection and version control