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Building Network Automation Solutions

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Build your own network automation solution during this 9-module high-intensity interactive online course.
You have to be registered for this online course, or have this course selected as part of an active Expert ipSpace.net Subscription to access all course materials.

Building Network Automation Solutions

This page contains the pointers to self-study materials, module descriptions and hands-on exercises for the Building Network Automation Solutions online course.

For other details, please visit the main course page.

1:10:17 Course Introduction

This section describes:

  • Course goals and course structure;
  • How you should progress through the course;
  • Self-study materials and live sessions;
  • Hands-on exercises and building your own lab;
  • Detailed course contents

This section contains a number of videos and documents you should watch/read to better understand the course structure and how you should progress through it.

52:13 Course Introduction Presentation

Course Introduction 13:37 2018-09-28
Hands-on Exercises 14:00 2018-09-28
Content Details 13:57 2018-09-28
Questions and Answers 10:39 2018-09-28
Finding Your Way Around the Course Materials 18:04 2019-12-22

Must-read Documents

Read This First document 7.7K 2018-12-23
Course web site
Submitting Hands-On Exercise Solutions 1.4K 2018-12-26

24:17:23 Getting Started

The initial module of the course covers the big picture:

  • What is network automation?
  • How do I build a full-blown network automation solution?
  • Network automation services you might need
  • Reusable components within these services
  • Useful network automation tools (and how to select them)

22:10:00 Ansible for Networking Engineers Online Course

Although you can use any tool you wish to implement your solutions throughout the course, most presentations and examples will use Ansible. It's therefore highly recommended that you get familiar with Ansible and the best way to do it is with Ansible online course – to start it, click the right arrow in this section

4:49:24 Easy Wins

We'll start with some easy wins that require read-only access to network devices and no data model apart from inventory of devices. You’ll collect data from devices using SNMP, show commands or device-specific API, and create summary- or compliance reports.

11:35:48 Data Models

Data models are the crux of any successful network automation solution, and getting them just right is a mixture of science and art. After finishing this section you’ll create two data models: an infrastructure data model and a services data model, trying to make them as abstract as possible.

6:49:15 Changing Network Configurations or State

Using the data models built in the previous section we’ll generate device configurations and deploy them on network devices to provision transport infrastructure or new services. You’ll also use the same data models to validate successful configuration deployment.

10:37:46 Validation, Error Handling and Unit Tests

This section describes various approaches to data validation and error handling. We’ll also focus on unit tests - simple tests that verify the correctness of your code, and stress-test it using as many invalid inputs as possible - and figure out how to automate them as part of your deployment process.

16:39:53 Putting It All Together

After completing your infrastructure- and service deployment solution, you’ll explore the means of integrating your solution with front-end orchestrations systems or back-end databases.

2:40:22 Network Infrastructure as Code

Network Infrastructure as Code is an interesting approach to network automation: use software development techniques to manage your infrastructure.

8:44:42 Event-Driven Automation

After you’ve mastered device and service provisioning, and started using it in real-time production environment, it’s time for the next step: automate responses to significant events occuring in your network.

2:17:06 Network Monitoring and Observability

Modern open-source software enables you to build advanced network monitoring and observability solutions based on data acquired from SNMP, CLI commands, and streaming telementry, and stored in time-series databases or Hadoop data stores.

6:50:20 Reference: Network Automation Tools

Guest speakers presenting in live course sessions described numerous interesting network automation tools. While the examples in this course usually use Ansible, don’t limit yourself to a single tool. After mastering it, start exploring the alternatives - they might be a better fit for your next challenge.

125:49:00 List of Self-Study materials

This section contains the comprehensive list of self-study materials.

Several presentations from the past live sessions are also part of the mandatory or recommended materials - see the individual modules for more details.

34:38:00 Mandatory materials

Please make sure you're familiar with the topics covered in these materials to be able to follow the course.

Network Automation 101 1:48:00
Network Automation Tools 10:40:00
Ansible for Networking Engineers (self-paced course) 22:10:00

It's highly recommended that you watch these materials before attending the course

Network Automation Use Cases 7:22:00
Building Network Automation Solutions - January 2017 session 16:06:00
Building Network Automation Solutions - September 2017 session 13:46:00
Building Network Automation Solutions - February 2018 session 11:30:00
Building Network Automation Solutions - September 2018 session 11:57:00
Building Network Automation Solutions - February 2019 session 10:43:00

7:52:00 Network Automation Days

This section contains guest speaker presentations from our Network Automation Days events (starting from autumn 2020)

Building Network Automation Solutions - November 2020 session 7:52:00

11:55:00 Optional materials

These topics are included for your reference. You won't need the to follow the course.

Network Programmability 101 46:00
Introduction to Software Defined Networking (SDN) 4:16:00
NETCONF and YANG 4:25:00
Nornir: Speed Up Network Automation 2:28:00
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