Chapter 1 What is Network Automation?
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o Large network operations staffing requirements.
Software-Defined Networking Before discussing Software-Defined Networking (SDN), some basic networking concepts will be introduced. Theoretically, there are three planes in computer networks: the management plane; the control plane; and the data plane.
SDN, also affectionately known as “Still Does Nothing”, aims to separate and centralize the control plane functions of the network while leaving the data plane functions distributed amongst the devices. The management plane functionality, however, remains distributed and still requires, even under SDN, at least some device-to-device management. SDN has not exactly been the silver bullet magically solving all organizational challenges faced with operating a large-scale network. However, SDN has been given new life, particularly for decoupling and centralizing the management plane in the form of network automation. The focus of this book is to show how Ansible can be used to interface with the management plane.
