Book Image

Mastering Python Networking - Third Edition

By : Eric Chou
Book Image

Mastering Python Networking - Third Edition

By: Eric Chou

Overview of this book

Networks in your infrastructure set the foundation for how your application can be deployed, maintained, and serviced. Python is the ideal language for network engineers to explore tools that were previously available to systems engineers and application developers. In Mastering Python Networking, Third edition, you’ll embark on a Python-based journey to transition from traditional network engineers to network developers ready for the next-generation of networks. This new edition is completely revised and updated to work with Python 3. In addition to new chapters on network data analysis with ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, and Beats) and Azure Cloud Networking, it includes updates on using newer libraries such as pyATS and Nornir, as well as Ansible 2.8. Each chapter is updated with the latest libraries with working examples to ensure compatibility and understanding of the concepts. Starting with a basic overview of Python, the book teaches you how it can interact with both legacy and API-enabled network devices. You will learn to leverage high-level Python packages and frameworks to perform network automation tasks, monitoring, management, and enhanced network security followed by Azure and AWS Cloud networking. Finally, you will use Jenkins for continuous integration as well as testing tools to verify your network.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
16
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17
Index

The Arista Python API

Arista Networks have always been focused on large-scale data center networks. On its corporate profile page (https://www.arista.com/en/company/company-overview), it states the following:

"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 know are exploding with servers, databases, and, yes, network equipment. It makes sense that automation has always been one of Arista's leading features. In fact, it has a Linux underpin behind their operating system, allowing many added benefits such as Linux commands and a built-in Python interpreter directly on the platform. From day one, Arista was open about exposing the Linux and Python features to the network operators.

Like other vendors, you can interact with Arista devices directly via eAPI, or you can choose...