network automation

 In the era of network automation, how do you manage your device configuration?

Using the CLI was easy. We logged in and applied the configuration. There was basically only one way of doing it (excluding GUIs). With network automation, we have a plethora of options, let's explore some of them.

𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 - There are tools like Cisco Catalyst Center, HPE Mist, and many others. These typically do everything from zero touch provisioning, to software updates, to assurance, to device configuration. While powerful, it can be costly and might not apply to your entire fleet of devices.

𝐀𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 - Ansible is one of the easier tools to get started with. It uses YAML syntax which is pretty easy to learn and human readable. The organization may already be familiar with Ansible for automating other infrastructure. It may struggle with more complex tasks and also has a history of modifying the core module which may break existing tooling.

𝐓𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 - Terraform is commonly used in public clouds. This is a benefit for teams that have a lot of workloads there. While it has its own domain-specific language, it's similar enough to JSON to not make it that steep of a learning curve. A benefit with Terraform is that it can be used for many things. If you need more functionality than what's in a provider, you should know that providers are typically written in Go. This makes it more difficult to extend functionality. Not all devices may support for example RESTCONF.

𝐍𝐄𝐓𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅/𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅 - You could manage configuration with NETCONF/RESTCONF directly, but I don't think anyone loves XML or JSON enough to be writing those payloads by hand.

𝐏𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐧 - You could use Python to manage configurations. Either with a more traditional approach using tools like Netmiko and Scrapli, or the more elegant approach using tools like NAPALM or Nornir. There may be some more development needed with Python, but also total freedom and the ability to extend functionality using a language you have experience with.