Howdy!! There’s so much network automation content out there, I’ve been feeling like there’s not much value in blogging about it. This is the first post of a of a series with some theory and lab-like tutorials plus code examples of what I believe to be the meat and bones of Infrastructure as Code(IaC).
In the last decade, the industry has been seeing a strong push to adopt software practices towards network engineering. SOME COMPANIES have been successful at that, but I don’t think that’s for everyone. Software development is hard; cost-effective software development is an especially rare beast when you are paying 300K per engineer annually. Okay, so, what?
I claim it’s way more feasible to take a shorter step and aim to implement successful DevOps practices to your networking team than it is to FULLY run your network team like a software team. Infra-as-Code comes in as an enabler for that goal.
Why Infra-as-Code(IaC)?
Infrastructure as Code can simplify and accelerate your infrastructure provisioning process, help you avoid mistakes and comply with policies, keep your environments consistent, and save your company a lot of time and money. Your engineers can be more productive on focus on higher-value tasks. And you can better serve your customers.
https://www.thorntech.com/2018/01/infrastructureascodebenefits/
If IaC isn’t something you’re doing now, maybe it’s time to start!
I’m SOLD! HOW can I get started?
I’m glad I asked! This article defines 6 best-practices to take the most out of IaC:
- Codify everything
- Document as little as possible
- Maintain version control
- Continuously test, integrate, and deploy
- Make your infrastructure code modular
- Make your infrastructure immutable (when possible)
So, this is our lab curriculum, so far:
1. Codify everything: How to use Ansible to automate network provisioning.
3. Maintain version control: Git Tutorial with Ansible
4. Continuously test, integrate and deploy: CI/CD with GitLab
4.1 Continuous test with Batfish and Robot framework
Let me know how this sounds, and if you find this post in the future but I haven’t followed up with it, please make a comment, and I’ll do my best to get it done.
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