Arista Networks have always been focused on large-scale data center networks. In its corporate profile page (https://www.arista.com/en/company/company-overview), it is stated as follows:
"Arista Networks was founded to pioneer and deliver software-driven cloud networking solutions for large data center storage and computing environments."
Notice that the statement specifically called out large data centers, which we already know are exploded with servers, databases, and, yes, network equipment. It makes sense that automation has always been one of Arista's leading features. In fact, they have a Linux underpin behind their operating system, allowing many added benefits such as Linux commands and a built-in Python interpreter.
Like other vendors, you can interact with Arista devices directly via eAPI, or you can choose to leverage their Python library. We will see examples of both. We will also look at Arista's integration with the Ansible framework in later chapters.