Chapter 4 Where to Start with Network Automation?

 IOS and NXOS global configuration enterprise standards:

o Banners. o AAA. o RADIUS. o NTP. o DNS. o SNMP. o Syslog. o Archive. o Boot version. o Standard global configurations.

As expertise improves, identify other candidates for future automation to expand the scope of coverage. Most devices will follow the same methodology used to automate network devices. Other candidates include:

 Data center networking.  Load-balancers.  Firewalls.  Network appliances / controllers.  Storage devices.  Cloud.  Windows Servers.  Linux Servers.

A library of supported vendors and available Ansible modules can be found here: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/modules_by_category.html Network Automation Readiness Evaluation Before beginning to write playbooks or creating data models, take time to evaluate the network for automation readiness. Automating a poorly-designed network is a much more difficult task than automating a well-designed network. In fact, it might not be possible to fully automate a network that lacks basic standards. After all, a big step in network automation is full configuration management that leverages dynamic templates. A network without basic standards cannot be templated. The ability to automatically gather information and run one-time tactical playbooks exists, however full configuration management may be difficult to achieve. Some items to consider when determining network readiness:  Campus design – core, distribution, access layers.  Layer 1:

o Physical connectivity. o Standardized interfaces for uplinks. o Copper or fiber. o Speeds.  Layer 2 / layer 3:

o Boundary at the distribution layer. o Standard VLANs. o IP address scheme.