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

Chapter 3. Accessing and Mining Data from Network

Looking back, we now have a fair idea of the basics of writing Python scripts and how to get meaningful data out of information. We have covered how to write Python scripts, interact with network devices, and have also worked on the basics of PowerShell so that we can work with both PowerShell and Python scripts. Now we will move towards a deeper understanding of using Python by looking at various examples. In this chapter we will focus on working with various Network devices to dig or fetch relevant information from devices, working on that information to create new configurations and pushing it back to the devices for added or enhanced functionality.

We will work on some common scenarios that we may face and try to solve them with Python. These examples or scenarios can be extended depending on a programmer's needs, and can be used as a reference to achieve automation in complex tasks.

Some of the key concepts we will be covering are as follows...