Heavy Networking 571: Network Automation Workflows With Jenkins

Today on Heavy Networking, network automation workflow. For our show today, that means the process of creating a configuration artifact, auditing devices to see if they are already configured with this artifact, and making it so if they are not. For example, let’s say you have an NTP standard for all your network devices. That NTP standard would drive a configuration artifact – some chunk of CLI configuration stanza or API calls or Ansible playbook that make your network device use NTP the way you want. You might have a library of config artifacts like this governing SNMP, AAA, logging, etc. How do you make sure all of these artifacts – these golden config standards – are running on all your network devices? You could check them by hand, but that’s fairly impractical at scale, and besides…a robot can do that job better. We need an automated workflow. There’s a lot to a workflow system like this, and no one right way to do it. There are many commercial network automation tools that can do this for you. But it’s certainly possible to roll your own. Our guest today is Steve Puluka, and he’s working with an automation workflow system that uses GitLab and Jenkins, among other tools to make sure the network devices he supports are pure gold. Steve is an IP Architect at DQE Communications. Sponsor: Packet Pushers Livestream With Alkira The cloud era requires a clean-sheet approach to networking. Join the Packet Pushers’ inaugural Livestream event on April 22 to find out how the Alkira Network Cloud, our Livestream sponsor, lets you deploy and manage single and multi-cloud networks with built-in visibility, security, and governance–all delivered as-a-service. This free virtual event includes technical deep-dives, roundtable discussions hosted by the Packet Pushers, and use cases, deployment scenarios, and architectures. Go to packetpushers.net/livestream to register. Show Links: Puluka.com – Steve Puluka’s blog @spuluka – Steve Puluka on Twitter Steve Puluka on LinkedIn Heavy Networking 564: Seven Engineers At The Community Roundtable – Packet Pushers