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

Summary


In this chapter, we learned about the basic functionality of SDN controllers, programmable fabric, and some network automation tools. We have also seen how to work with cloud platforms and, with reference to a live example of managing AWS Cloud from Python, understood how we can control cloud operations using automation.

We gained a deep understanding about the role of controllers, and with some examples of Cisco controllers, went into details on how a controller can be programmed or called in programs/scripts to perform certain tasks. We also saw the basics of some popular network automation tools, such as SolarWinds, and created an in-house web-based automation tool for monitoring our network, called PingMatrix or PingMesh.