Automate Your Network: Introducing the Modern Approach to Enterprise Network Management

Book excerpt: Network automation is one of the hottest topics in Information Technology today. This revolutionary book aims to illustrate the transformative journey towards full enterprise network automation. This book outlines the tools, technologies and processes required to fully automate an enterprise network. Automated network configuration management is more than converting your network configurations to code. The benefits of source control, version control, automated builds, automated testing and automated releases are realized in the world of networking using well established software development practices. The next-generation network administrative toolkit is introduced including Microsoft Team Foundation Server, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Git, Linux, and the Ansible framework. Not only will these new technologies be covered at length, a new and continuously integrated / continuously delivered pipeline is also introduced. Starting with safe, simple, non-intrusive, non-disruptive information gathering organizations can ease into network automation while building a dynamic library of documentation and on-demand utilities for network operations. Once comfortable with the new ecosystem, administrators can begin making fully automated, orchestrated, and tactical changes to the network. The next evolutionary leap occurs when fully automated network configuration management is implemented. Important information from the network running-configurations is abstracted into data models in a human readable format. Device configurations are dynamically templated creating a scalable, intent-based, source of truth. Much like in the world of software development, full automation of the network using a CI/CD pipeline can be realized. Automated builds, automated testing and automated scheduled releases are orchestrated and executed when changes are approved and checked into the central repository. This book is unlike any on the market today as it includes multiple Ansible playbooks, sample YAML data models and Jinja2 templates for network devices, and a whole new methodology and approach to enterprise network administration and management. The CLI no longer cuts it. Readers should take away from this book a new approach to enterprise network management and administration as well as the full knowledge and understanding of how to use TFS, VS Code, Git, and Ansible to create an automation ecosystem. Readers should have some basic understanding of modern network design, operation, and configuration. No prior programming or software development experience is required. John Capobianco has over 20 years of IT experience and is currently a Technical Advisor for the Canadian House of Commons. A graduate of St. Lawrence College's Computer Programmer Analyst program, John is also a former Professor at St. Lawrence College in the Computer Networking and Technical Support (CNTS) program. John has achieved CCNP, CCDP, CCNA: Data Center, MCITP: EA/SA, CompTIA A+ / Network+, and ITIL Foundation certifications. Having discovered a new way to interface with the network John felt compelled to share this new methodology in hopes of revolutionizing the industry and bringing network automation to the world.