Book Image

Practical Network Automation

By : Abhishek Ratan
Book Image

Practical Network Automation

By: Abhishek Ratan

Overview of this book

Network automation is the use of IT controls to supervise and carry out every-day network management functions. It plays a key role in network virtualization technologies and network functions. The book starts by providing an introduction to network automation, SDN, and its applications, which include integrating DevOps tools to automate the network efficiently. It then guides you through different network automation tasks and covers various data digging and reporting methodologies such as IPv6 migration, DC relocations, and interface parsing, all the while retaining security and improving data center robustness. The book then moves on to the use of Python and the management of SSH keys for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, all followed by practical use cases. The book also covers the importance of Ansible for network automation including best practices in automation, ways to test automated networks using different tools, and other important techniques. By the end of the book, you will be well acquainted with the various aspects of network automation.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Programmable network devices


Looking back at historic implementations, we had a fixed set of hardware or networks geared for catering services to the end users. End users also had a limited set of connection options to access a limited set of networks or connected resources. As the number of users increased, a simple solution was to add additional hardware or network gear. However, with the surge of different end user devices, such as mobile phones, and high data demand and up time requirements for end users, managing the increasing amount of hardware and additional connections becomes a complex task.

A simple device failure or cable failure might impact the entire set of connected hardware or network gears, which would create a widespread downtime for end users, resulting in a loss of man hours both in terms of productivity and trust. Think of a large internet service provider (ISP) with recurring outages, with each outage affecting a large set of both enterprise and home users. If a new...